NEW! I'm now painting custom house portraits. You provide me with the digital photos, and I'll paint a customized 11x14 acrylic painting of your home. Makes a great gift! Reasonable prices. Contact me for more information.
Etsy
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ViridianArt
Back in the fall of 1993, during an extremely stressful period in my life, I picked up a brush and began painting. Although it was something I'd been contemplating for several years, I hadn't ever gotten around to doing anything about that burning need to create. But during that difficult time period, I thought painting might be a way of relaxing. So I went downtown to the local stationery store, bought a few canvas boards and a starter set of paints--which just happened to be acrylics. Fourteen years later, I'm still using acrylic paints. I like what I can do with them, the clean-up is easy, and I don't have to worry about killing my lovebirds with toxic fumes.
Those first paintings were frighteningly bad (I still have the first two I painted, but nobody outside my family will ever see them!), but I persevered. I found that painting helped me to maintain sanity. I could lose myself in it for hours and emerge feeling as though only minutes had passed. There was something spiritual about what I was doing, something that felt so right, in spite of the fact that I was jumping into this new passion blindfolded.
Somewhere along the way, I discovered Bob Ross on PBS, and I learned a few tricks from him, including painting wet-on-wet. But as much as I enjoyed painting those happy little trees and finishing a painting in a half-hour, I wanted more. I began to develop my own style. I joined the North Light Book Club and kept on learning.
I'm still learning. Over the past few years, my life has been complicated and busy; I'm a writer, and between the day job and writing a book a year on deadline, I haven't had the time I wanted to devote to learning the craft. I've gone through spells when, for two or three years at a time, I painted nothing. But it's interesting; even when I wasn't painting, a surprising number of my fictional characters were. It must have been my subconscious trying to tell me something. For a long time, I've felt as though something was missing. Finally, at the ripe old age of fifty-two, I realize what it is: color, light and shadow, the feel of a brush in my hand and the soul-deep satisfaction I get from just sitting and looking at a new painting that came from somewhere inside of me. So here I go once again, only this time I'm vowing to set aside time for the painting. It makes me happy. That's the reason I'm doing it. It's the only reason I need.
I've learned enough, and improved enough, after all these years, so that I no longer consider myself a rank amateur. However, I'm still in deep learning mode. I've decided to embrace that creative side of myself, and to learn and grow as an artist. I paint to please myself, but I'm always open to suggestions that will help me improve my work.
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