whimsey

When we lived in Switzerland I started messing around with water colours a bit more. I began experimenting with landscape style painting, thus taking up my father's brush so to speak. Instead of being remarkably exacting in detail though, as he often was, I let 'er rip. It was freeing to slosh water and paint around to see where it all went, especially after the exacting nature of the medieval style illumination I had been doing so much of.

I enjoy almost all forms of "painting" I use this term somewhat loosely as many of my computer bit acrylics were painted with my bare hands and it felt really good, though it did take forever to get that stuff off my hands afterwards. I love the very precise work of illumination because it is just that, exacting. You really have to get it perfect or else it looks bad. If you study the medieval stuff long enough you start to see where people go off the track so to speak. You get that "It looks beautiful but something isn't quite right" sense. I often think that figuring out what "isn't quite right" is almost 75% of the battle to the craft. I am still working on this. I think that maybe I'll have it all sorted out by the time I'm 100 but then again maybe not.


It took me a long time to be able to call myself an artist but it is what I am. I make art, all kinds of art and some of it I do very well other bits are just whimsical experiments along the way. I'm not particularly good at self promotion and there are no galleries around the world boasting they have one of my pieces on their walls, I don't sell much and for the most part none of this is overly worrisome to me. I make art because it's what I have to do. Sometimes in batches, sometimes exacting and sometimes in 5 minutes flat. Sometimes I love what I've done so much it stays on my wall and some pieces I hang on to because they are awful. In-between that I make art that for the most part I am quite proud of. And occasionally I share some of it here.