I am a self taught contemporary painter from Pennsylvania who paints in any medium including oils, acrylics, watercolors, gouache, inks and other. I will also mix any medium to achieve the desired effect. I grew up using pastels and watercolors as a child and also enjoyed using available colored materials, creating images and scenes from anything that I could get my hands on. I would create landscapes and abstract work with rocks onto rock, walls or wood then later fill in with paint. Growing up, brushes were like gold and if you painted with them and forgot to clean them, they would dry solid as a rock so finding other means of applying paint was essential. Later in life, you find that purchasing the most expensive or best reviewed brush doesn’t give you the desired feel. Some artists have a few specific brushes that they swear by but I am not confined to any brush, object or material. Since I do not have a specific style of painting, I use whatever I’ve learned or style of painting to achieve the effect needed. This philosophy carries over to my brushes or lack of brushes.
I believe that everyone has the ability to create or to invent but the key is through hard work and practice. I’ve played the guitar for many years now and just like with music, the more you practice the better you will become and the more you will learn. It’s always been practice, practice, practice and with practice comes confidence then it’s just second nature. When creating art, a person has to interpret everything inwards and outwards which means that it has to go through the filter first, your filter. The greatest tool the artist has is their imagination and it’s a special gift that allows you to create something from nothing.
All of my paintings are places in my mind, where I would want to be so I do not paint a landscape that I am visually looking at i.e. plein air painting nor do I paint from images and all of my paintings are painted in my outside studio, with the doors open and sometimes, snow blowing in. Achieving an emotional response over a visual response is a good goal and this is why I’ve always said, “Good art makes you look, Great art makes you experience.”
Here is an acrylic painting from many years ago, it’s a place in my mind where I would want to go.
