This portfolio is a series of pictorial landscapes depicting areas of preservation in the United States. In the past decade, I have had the opportunity to work as a volunteer on photographic projects for both the national park and forest services. These assignments along with other lengthy trips have allowed me to spend hours exploring and observing some of this country's most pristine areas.

Growing up in Dubuque, IA. I really didn't develop an awareness of the unglaciated characteristics of the land around me. All I knew was that "downtown" truly was down the hill from where I lived. It wasn't until my first plane ride in college from St. Louis to Los Angeles that I began to acquire a sense of place, a sense of perspective, and a sense that there are varied landscapes way beyond the bluffs and Mississippi river of northeast Iowa. There below me I saw plains, mountain ranges, canyons, deserts, and glimmering lakes.

My time spent in the wilderness has mostly been traveled alone. With a deep affection and reverence for nature and its elements. I have hiked through rain forests, walked out into the desert, taken dips in mountain lakes, paddled through swamps, and camped under a starry night. I have enjoyed these times alone; embracing the beauty all the while observing the light as it transforms and communicates the mood of the landscape.

My art is motivated by a strong fascination to explore and record everything involved in what gives the landscape its form and the human toil that maintains or changes it. Geologically speaking, why are there sand dunes in southern Colorado? How many millions of years did it take to form that canyon? How did this grove of redwoods survive a thousand years? and what is this "river of grass" that is known as the Everglades? It is these curious questions that keep my journey of exploration going.