I follow a very conventional process in my work. I do water color or acrylic studies on site and then develop oil paintings in the studio based on those studies. I start very abstractly then "add color until an image occurs," as Chardin said. The paintings often take several weeks to develop, and during that time, they move back and forth from representational to not very representational until the way they look seems to make sense to me.
Hopefully, the result is a balance between representational and abstract painting that allows me to refer to the experience of a particular - often very compelling - place while expressing a broader view of the landscape as a whole.
.