My “love affair” with art began in my junior high school years when I began sketching portraits of my classmates during homeroom periods. It got a boost at age 13 when my art teacher entered my tempera abstract “La Vie Sous La Mer” (Life Under the Sea) in a competition, which won me a summer scholarship at the Cleveland Museum of Art. My “airy visions” have remained a constant theme in expressing my view of the world.
For years I just dabbled in various visual arts while pursuing math, music, education, a career in real estate, and family, but my eyes and my mind’s eye wouldn’t let me rest. They drew me back in recent years to put forth on paper what I see in light and color. I find that when I am actively painting, my ability to see the beauty in every shape and shadow intensifies my life experience to such a degree that I rely on painting to exponentially multiply my enjoyment of simple, quiet moments. Many of my abstracts have originated in my vivid technicolor dreams; I often awaken anxious to reproduce that elusive dream state, but my hands cannot mix and paint fast enough to catch more than a small glimmer of the beauty I saw in my mind’s eye.
To keep growing as an artist, I intentionally go back and forth between more realistic, representational works that require tight brushwork, to looser, freer paint flows in abstracted forms. My favorite approach seems to blend the two into abstracted representational pieces.
I chose to specialize in transparent watercolor as my preferred medium because it is a challenge that can never be fully mastered. No white or opaque is used in true transparent watercolor, so the painter must think backwards; the lighter areas and whites are created by not painting, and leaving the white of the paper in the desired shape. Depth is created by several layers, or washes, each letting earlier layers show through. Interesting textures can also be created by playing with how wet paints flow into one another.
As my love of abstract painting in watercolor expanded, I added acrylic pigments to my repertoire for even bolder, freer expression using an even more vibrant color palette in the larger size dimensions afforded by canvas painting.
I am delighted to share the results of my play with you. Whatever your mood, I hope you find something here that will resonate with it.
