My interaction with the New England landscape is a primary source of subject matter. By painting what I am familiar with, I avoid being mesmerized by novelty. This helps me to stay focused on the formal elements and keeps me engaged in building out the painting as an accumulation of marks and arrangements. I feel a connection to the tradition of representational picture-making but it is color relativity, shape, and compressed space that excites me. I spend more time looking than painting and I am slow to decide what I am reacting to. I consider this observational relationship to be as important as the finished work. 

Lagoon Study is a straight-forward translation of an area near my studio. This was completed fairly quickly in two days. I made some primitive sketches on-site and did all the painting in my studio. This is a man-made lagoon near the water treatment plant in my town. My landscape paintings often contain an element of how humans have manipulated the environment. I was initially interested in the horizintal dividing line created by the containment berm and how it seperated the vertical lines of trees from their reflection. That berm also seperates the lagoon from the nearby river and floodplain seen in the background of the painting. This was painted in the spring when the river, swollen and thrashing with thawing snowpack, was in contrast with this stagnant, silent lagoon.

~ Jarid DEL DEO, 2024