I will go about writing an artist's statement by way of responding to questions Robert Henri posed to his students nearly a century ago:

 

RH: "I do not want to see how skillful you are, I am not interested in your skill.  What do you get out of nature?"

 

DPT: I get energy.  I get recommendations for seemingly abstract compositions.  I get relationships between colors and textures and forms that I find pleasing and endlessly challenging.  I get to be alone and uninterrupted in my labor. 

 

RH: "Why do you paint this subject?"

 

DPT: Painting nature I find more freedom to let the painting depart from the visual source while still revealing the influence of it.  Nature is wild and abstract and messy, like my paintings.  It is also mysterious and open to narrative interpretations.

 

RH: "What is life to you?"

 

DPT: Life is inner-tubing down a wild river in summer.  Sometimes its slow and sometimes fast.  Sometimes you have to paddle, and sometimes the current takes you where it wants.  It can be scary or fun, depending on your attitude.

 

RH: "What reasons and what principles have you found?"

 

DPT:  I have found that if I stand before nature like a child and allow the wonder of it to overtake me, and apply myself wholly to the process of painting, without artifice or self consciousness, that I occasionally arrive at a pretty exciting result.

 

RH:  "What are your deductions?"

 

DPT:  I have deduced that the best paintings are the ones born of a kind of pure moment where nature showed me the essential elements (rhythm, color, texture, shape) and I was able to record them with economy.  If I respond to nature sincerely and ignore all of the voices saying to paint this way or that, the result is always better.

 

RH: "What projections have you made?"

 

DPT:  That utlimately my job is one of translation, not of duplication.

 

RH: "What excitement, what pleasure do you get out of it?"

 

DPT: This is really it, isn't it?  Henri always said if you aren't excited making the painting, no one will be excited looking at it.  The excitement for me is when I notice the fundamental elements in nature that will make a decent painting.  That moment can seem fleeting, so I work fast to get it onto the canvas before I lose it.  That part is a gas.  Sometimes I feel like the time to put paint on palette, then on brush, and then on canvas is far too long and so I just squeeze it onto the canvas and smash it around with my hands so as to not waste any time or thin down the paint with other colors.  I find great pleasure in making a terrific mess on the canvas!  If you see me with paint in my fingernails you know Ive had a good time.

 

RH:  "Your skill is the thing of least interest to me."

 

DPT:  Thank God!

 

Robert Henri quote excerpted from The Art Spirit, Harper & Row 1923