watercolor

  Ask a room full of artists why they paint, and you will get a room full of answers. Such as spiritual callings, personal challenges, or a desire to beautify the world,, and so on and so forth.  Most artists have multiple overlapping reasons.

   The single strongest motivator that drives most of our actions is the desire to feel important. We feel good when we are appreciated. I am not saying that artists are not driven also by all those other reasons, but I am doubtful that many artists would continue creating art, if no one liked their work.

  Artists are often told  how ''gifted,'' they are. In most cases, and certainly in mine, if there was a gift involved, it was being born with curiosity and desire. My grandma used to say to me that I got my talent from her mom. I disagreed. I feel that in nearly all but a few rare cases that ''talent'' is earned. It takes a lot of brush miles to gain a semblance of control.

  I was inspired in the third grade by one of those rare exceptions. A classmate of mine was some sort of savant. He drew flawless pictures on an insane level. It did not make sense to my little third grade brain that he could be so good. I resolved to someday be that good myself, I vowed to  be an artist. The seed was planted. I started practicing.

   What is an artist? An artist is someone who intentionally manipulates materials for esthetic purposes. An artist arranges things in a pleasing manor, or at least attempts to. Everyone has heard the saying, ''Beauty is in the eye of the beholder''. I don't disagree with that. certainly not everything is equally pleasing to all people. There are however some things that are nearly universally accepted as being beautiful. I want to paint that.

 My challenge as a young artist had been to reproduce what I saw. My art was a sort of documentation, In my twenties my art changed to symbolism , and surrealism . Also as a young man I used my art as a way to represent social injustices  as I perceived them. Thankfully I was drawn more to the beauty and wonder of the world than to its problems. I choose to see and express beauty.there is no end to it.

 Our minds create the images we see, by interpreting information.  We have had a lot of practice doing it. Our minds create the 3-D images of the world, from the 2-D images in our eyes. Our brains interpret a lot of info about the world in order to see in 3-d.  Such as shadows, overlapping objects, color and value changes,etc,etc etc.

  If enough of this info is missing or wrong it causes an unexpected alert in a viewers mind. For instance if  shadows go in the wrong direction, or if a distant mountain is too dark. It just wont look right.

 My challenge as an artist is to include enough of the expected info in my work. Allowing the eyes of my viewers to relax and enjoy. I want my viewers to see the subject, not the painting.

 These are just a few of my challenges, I thank you for being here. I have a lot of things I'd like to share so please come back and visit..And feel free to ask any questions, or leave a comment.