Artist Statement
Loveable colors, painterly imagination, flexibility! These are my heartfelt aims. My realistic subjects are animals, plants & nature-scapes. And I love creating abstracts & fantasies. LOTS of art classes & a 25-year graphic-arts career fashioned the Me-of-Now. In realistic works such as above, the foregrounds are as true as I’m able to paint, while the backgrounds are most-often abstracted.
Approach #1: Taking many photos & drawing often, I select 2-3 favorites, interweave & alter elements, & transfer the composition to canvas. A gradual overall development of the painting follows, via 35+ thin layers of oil glazes & colors. Eventually I'm (pretty much) satisfied with every miniscule element. Finally a sigh of happiness, ahhh!
Approach #2: With barely any planning, or following casual drawings, I plunge in fast with acrylics on a variety of surfaces & discover what emerges. The creating is playful, sometimes even passable as 'Art.' This allows for a variant of Csikszentmihalyi's FLOW than that necessitated for the laser-beam focus indispensable for the accurate realism & correct anatomy of Approach #1.
End-of-last, brief doing nothing, yay! while contemplating my next painting’s possibilities … Our 2nd home in Chitwan, Nepal provides ample inspiration & material.
In 2021 my Watsonville art studio, The Paintbox, will once again be Open By Appointment Wed & Fri from 1-6 pm. Snacks & drinks provided. Visitors are free to roam about this studio-house-garden filled with paintings and music, and entirely lacking 'jabaradastee' (pressure). As we say in Nepal, Wel-come!
Location
407 Spruce Circle, Watsonville, CA,