These paintings are inspired by the former Lake Bonneville, a Late Pleistocene paleolake. The Great Salt Lake is a remnant. The old shorelines of Lake Bonneville can still be seen in the foothills of the Wasatch Front.  
   I have been exploring that geography using Google Earth. Traveling virtually, I snip photos as I pan and zoom around the landscape.  Each of these paintings is comprised of a variety of landscape elements found by scanning the former shorelines and interior of the lake. I create collages from my snipped photos, and finally, paint the new images in oil.
   Google Earth gathers images of the earth by airplane and satellite. They take millions of images of the landscape and knit them together using photogrammetry to construct 3d models. At this point in time, the algorithm draws and completes geometric shapes with precision, but organic objects like trees often render as blobs and awkwardly pasted textures. I am interested in capturing this moment in paint, before the technology improves and their 3d modeling of organic shapes becomes perfectly photorealistic.