Three Drinks  24 x 18  Acrylic on stretched canvas

I’ve been a painter since I was 12 years old when my aunt bought me my first set of oil paints.  Until I went off to college, I painted sporadically.  Sometimes I didn’t paint simply because I didn’t have the materials: paints, brushes, and canvases.  During those days I was much more of a sketcher.  I always had paper and pencils.  They were fast, cheap, and ultra portable.

My desire for painting originated with the giant art books in the public library.  Before college, the only way for me to see famous artwork was to find it in one of those books.  As good as the photography was, and as beautifully as those books were crafted, they would never be an acceptable substitute for seeing the original.

That was also my first experience with a creative spurt of activity that saw me finish dozens of painting and really start to understand the craft of oil painting.  I had thought about taking classes many times but I knew, even then, that I would always be a person who teaches himself.  It is, admittedly, a slower process and most likely more frustrating, but each discovery along the way feels more like it came from within me.  And then it becomes a permanent part of me.

There have been three of these creative spurts since then.  The first spurt started after my wedding over 30 years ago.  The second was 11 years ago when I sold my store and finished over 150 paintings in a little less than two years.  Almost every one of those paintings was an oil portrait.

I don’t know what makes me stop when I am in one of those high-production periods of time, but when I stop – I stop.  I have also wondered why it takes so long for me to start again.  I am not sure but I have always sort of thought of it as needing time to absorb…life.  During this current spurt of creativity that started about a year ago, I have a plan that I am trying to stick to. 

The plan sounds simple enough; what if I completely divorced my need to try to please people who see it?  Or to put it another way; what if I focused much more on the process and much less on the outcome?  Easily said, but what I have noticed over the course of this year, it is very difficult to follow.  I find myself constantly trying to make it look, I don’t know…marketable, I guess.  Needless to say, there have been paintings that I consider a success and then there are all the others.

For the first time in my life, painting is changing me.  I’m not sure how my work looks to everyone but judging by the folk’s ratings and comments on OS, I still have a long way to go.  The important thing is that I stay on plan.  I have a completely different affection towards my work than I think I have ever had.  When I look at one of my paintings, I remember the process very vividly.  And I have to tell you - I LOVE my process.  I think that one day; I will have a style that I will be known for.  I think it happens when you fall in love with your own process.  So, in that way, I am getting closer.

I have completed over 80 paintings the last 12 months.  More than enough to complete the one-a-week posts I promised to do on OS.  If I don’t make it, it is not because I don’t have enough pictures to post.  I realize OS is not for artists.  I understand that.  Plus, life goes on and sometimes artists want to move.  If this one does, it will be to my own little corner of the Internet.  There, I will display the length and breadth of my artwork; from cartoons to sketches to watercolor paint to oil paint to digital prints to acrylic paint to mixed media.  If you want to see it all, you can stop by and say hi.  I’ll let you know.

In the meantime, I am still here, and I invite you to follow my journey - one painting every week for a year.

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