I often joke that I can’t draw a straight line for the life of me. It’s actually fairly accurate, though. This probably lends to my love for painting nature. Maybe it comes from my love of nature instead. It’s a sort of “chicken-egg” situation, who knows what came first.
I find I can paint nature scenes intuitively because the shapes and lines are fluid and I can have more freedom. I tend to struggle within the confines of precision and exactness. Real life rarely is precise, rather it breathes and shifts perpetually. All my paintings strive to capture the movement of a scene.
I did a small series of old buildings and barns for an art project in highschool. It was a good exercise because it pushed me to create outside of my comfort zone. It was also a good experience because it taught me what I DID NOT want to do with my art. Ruling out what you are not is just as important as finding what you are in the process of self discovery.
A few years back I made a gift for friends of mine who owned a restaurant. They were selling the business and moving away. We had been good friends and they had given me a wonderful place to work for years. It was a little painting, and still, somehow, it took me forever to finish. The labor of love was well worth the time invested but it also further confirmed for me that my calling is to the wilds of nature.
