Craig Hood paints outdoors just after dawn. His paintings spontaneously emerge from the darkness just as nature’s first light reveals the land’s shapes, contours, palette and atmosphere. He paints what he sees, what he senses, what he thinks, what’s in front, what’s behind, what’s above and what is below him all at once. His landscapes are painted “fast and slow at the same time”; he takes as much time as he needs to consider his viewpoints, decides how to proceed, and then quickly and uninhibitedly builds one stroke or mark after another in an unfolding sequence from beginning to end. The resultant work emerges from the interaction between the actual landscape and his idea of what the painting should look like, which creates very real tension for Hood, and provides the source of his excitement and the meaning of his work.