Saturday, May 1, 2010

getting started


Some background: I have been painting in oil since 2002. My passion is to try to convey the beauty and spirit of the southwest mesa-mountain-canyon country in which I live. The landscape is vast, and is a challenge in itself. Other challenges for me include a natural attraction to abstraction, a love of experimentation, and the relative isolation of Torrey, Utah, where I live and work. The latter has meant that my art education has been through workshops, taught by excellent artists and professors, but mostly limited to the hands-on nature of that forum. I lack a formal theoretical background. It also means that it is difficult to get feedback from fellow artists on my work. Hence, this blog.

Recently I have begun to experiment with cold wax as a medium for oil paint, inspired by the work of Rebecca Crowell, who also maintains a thoughtful and informative blog. That experimentation has raised old and new questions about my work, its purpose and its processes. I hope to use this format to explore all of the above.

The painting above is "Hidden Chambers", which I painted in 2008.

No comments: