New Venture Artworks

Since my early retirement in 2005 I have been devoting most of my time to my photography and my watercolor painting.  While I have dabbled in art periodically and sporadically over the past 40 years or more, I began painting watercolors seriously in 2004.  I have been a serious photographer for over 25 years, and most of my paintings are derived from my photographs.

When I began to paint watercolors my aim, like most new painters, was to achieve a realistic portrayal of my subjects.  But I soon began to find these types of paintings boring to paint, and I have since pushed myself into new areas, and especially toward an effort to achieve a more "loose" style of painting.

Painting loosely is a very general term and encompasses a multitude of different aspects of painting.  It does not mean just painting fast, being inaccurate, not including detail or painting carelessly.

Instead, it describes a free approach to placing paint on the paper and a minimization of detail which leads to a sense of spontaneity in the finished work, and avoids unnecessary fussiness in paint handling.

I would characterize my current painting style as mostly representational, existing somewhere between the abstract and the realistic; not purely impressionistic but not at all photo-realistic.  More specifically, the up-close detail of a representational painting may appear impressionistic, or even abstract, but when viewed from an appropriate distance, the painting takes on a sense of reality; that is, we can recognize the subject of the painting as an object that we understand and know.

Above all, I suppose, representational art is about the suggestion of detail, not the recording of detail.  Being both a photographer and a painter, I am always conscious of the fact that the camera records, while the artist suggests.  As Vincent Van Gogh said: "A work of art is a personal encounter with reality, not a copy."