I respond to impressions of the world around me through my watercolor painting. Capturing a moment in time, I strive to transform an ordinary scene into something striking and often almost magical. Lighting, color, and atmosphere are the elements I manipulate to achieve this effect. In this series of paintings, I concentrate on color, shape and pattern. I play with color, using lots of exaggeration, to achieve impressionistic renderings of the forces in the natural world. I use the juxtaposition of warm and cool colors to create tension within the painting. I use shapes that I find within the scene to create an interesting composition but take liberties varying these shapes. I make an initial plan for both value and color before I start most paintings. This allows me to maintain freshness in the actual painting, even with some changes as I go along.