I came to fine art painting through a different door than many artists. For years, I worked as an airbrush artist and was often hired to create photorealistic portraits. In those days, deviating from the reference was unacceptable. Colors, values, shadows, and highlights had to be spot-on for the finished piece to look like what the client wanted. And while I was creating cartoon illustrations at the same time, the painting part of my work always seemed rigid and structured.
When I first started exploring painting on canvas, my creative brain rebelled against the years of copying by going deeply into the world of abstracts. There was something freeing about not having to follow a reference photo and simply letting creativity flow without apparent rules or structure.
Abstracts are still one of my favorite styles, and I realized that, as a cartoonist, I’ve been abstracting the human form for years. When I started exploring oil painting, there was something about the medium that felt more serious. Years ago, my illustrator friend, Lisa Horstman, mentioned she was using oils for some of her cartoon illustrations and suggested I explore them. But I only recently began working with oils in caricature and cartoon illustration. I’m still a bit clumsy with the medium, but I’ve grown to love painting with it.
I’ve never considered myself a landscape painter. In fact, it always seemed like a boring subject to me. But for whatever reason, I’ve recently found myself exploring landscapes and enjoying them more than I thought I would. My only reservation has been that it felt like a return to realism. After painting a few realistic landscapes, I began to see just how much room there is for non-realistic landscapes. Everything from fantasy to cartoon to straight-out abstract.
This autumn landscape is my most recent, and it started begging me to paint it a few weeks before I actually did. I saw the red leaves against the blue sky on trees with exaggerated shapes. It was one of those paintings that, in the end, looked like the vision I had of it at the beginning. It’s always fun when that happens.
I suppose the lesson is to just keep exploring. No one has to paint the same way others do. In fact, it’s best that you don’t. Invent your own subjects, your own techniques, your own point of view. I think that’s what they call “style.” Maybe one day I’ll get me one of those.
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