Though these were originally painted on location in France, Florida, or California, I spent a period editing these and other plein airs in my Idyllwild studio.

Bear with me, as I discuss the crazy optics guiding these edits.

In the 1990s I lived on the Island of Rhodes, of the purist and brightest light. I had a dear friend, Thodoris Archontopoulos, a Byzantian archaeologist and art historian, and I got to visit some great archaeological sites with him. Some were living monuments, like monasteries, and I got to see areas of them that were barred from the public. In one of these monasteries on hill over-looking Greek farms, I had incredible visual experience that I will never forget. I was walking up its tower’s stairwell, with small lookout windows (open air). And noticed a most crazy optical phenomena: It was as if all the vibrations of color and light from the valley zoomed up to the window, creating a screen of light, that acted like a screen to the window, but that I could also see through it. As if it were a movie screen stretched across the window projecting the landscape below. The sensation of seeing both a flat screen of light and the 3D of the landscape was intense, and an amazing optical puzzle.

I am fairly certain that part of the puzzle is that light vibrations do zoom up to the surface of our eyeballs, like the monastery window, and dance there on the surface of our eyes. But our perceptions have been trained by us to discern depth, or how else would we drive a car successfully. It seems a paradox, but I believe both are true, the vibrations sparkle the surface of our eyes and we can discern depth through the vibrations.

These four plein airs were edited at the same time with the goal to bring the vibrations to the surface of our eyes and enable us to see depth through them. For me, they are wildly successful at this!

Switching gears, the settings were peaceful, beautiful, perfect temperature, and gave me the feeling I could gaze forever there.