Why I Create

When I was a child, I spent a lot of time drawing. In the summer when I was 7 years old, my parents and I would go to a cottage, and I would draw on the dock. As I began to grow up, I had a deep interest in drawing trees, and landscapes. At 11 years old, I drew endless drawings of forests and trees. In an art assignment in Grade 6, we had to clip out a face from a magazine, and draw and colour in the other half. I did the best in my class at this assignment. I took art classes all throughout High School, and studied Graphic Design at St Lawrence College in Kingston, Ontario.

When I graduated College, I had a hard time with jobs, so this gave me a lot of free time to draw, paint and take pictures. In 2016. I won an Honorable Mention on my Acrylic Painting “The Blue Waters of April. I also started a blog around this time to feature my artwork. I look forward to creating more artwork and would like to start marketing my work.

Light and colour play an important role in my painting. I am very interested in how light reflects off trees, and casts shadows. Light is the most important part of any painting and is also the most challenging part to convey properly. It is also interesting to paint water and its many states from mirrored forests, to shimmering whitecaps.

Each painting starts from my own personal photos, and drawings. I then draw the outlines on a canvas, and slowly building up the painting. There are many layers, and the light shines through them like stained glass.

I was most inspired by the Impressionist Artists, but do not paint with their spontaneity. Each painting is deliberate, and highly thought out. Besides my acrylic paintings, I also do Plien Aire drawings in pastel. But these are meant more as practice. These are done a lot quicker than my regular work, and kind of have their own unique style. Although I do not sell them, they are very useful when coming up for an idea of a painting, and I incorporate elements of them into my finished work.

I create artwork of nature and landscapes, because I have a love for the outdoors. I love how the light shines on trees in the evening and enjoy seeing wild animals. Whenever I see Animals or Birds, I get my camera out, and think “how can I turn this into a painting. I also like showing the landscapes, and creatures of Eastern Ontario. You do not have to go far to see nature in its natural habitat. Every once and a while I’ll see something for the first time, like Osprey on a huge nest 100 feet up in the tree that looks like a beaver den in the sky, or a bald eagle soaring overhead, and I will think to myself. How can I turn this into a painting. Usually I have photos, but also use my memories to add the elements together and create an effective painting.

My artwork represents, humanities connection, and need for nature. If it wasn’t for the natural world and the Earths ability to support life, even the life we tend to take for granted, we would not survive. Whether we like it or not, we are part of the natural world, and despite modernity we are not separate from it. We evolved on the open savanna with trees and animals around. In our subconscious we are forever longing to escape back into nature if only for a few hours on an afternoon.

I am also constantly thinking how to mix colour and the emotion it conveys in the painting. There is almost unlimited ways of combining colour. I try to mix my blacks with bright colours and use black out of the tube very infrequently, as it dulls the colour.

I am inspired by the Impressionist Artists, and the way how they paint light, there is something so mystical about light hitting objects and turning a mundane scene into something of beauty.

My pointillism paintings were inspired by Georges Seurat who invented pointillism in the late 1800s. I find beauty in creating a painting entirely out of dots, and how it all blends together in the eye to create a finished piece. When we look at objects we see an infinite number of coloured dots which blend together to make up what we are seeing, even if we are not able to perceive it. By creating my pointillism paintings I am showing this visual language to the world.

I am also inspired by my photography. I always seem to capture seemingly mundane scenes, whether it be a landscape, bird, or a building, and turn these seemingly mundane things into a very unique shot. I then use these photos for inspiration for my paintings, and 5 photos may come together to form the scene of the painting. Other times the photo will stand up entirely on its own and will need little changing.

I think it is important to have an actual print out of your photos when working on a painting, as well as on the computer screen. The dyes of the photo mixes more like paint and it is easier to get more accurate colours. However at the same time the colours in the photo may be too strong or garish so you are always trying to find ways to neutralize them.

Each painting starts with several drawings, and I usually also do a watercolour version before starting on the painting. I draw the painting out on paper first to get the proportions right, and then transfer it to canvas. A lot of my paintings take over 20 hours to complete. I add layer after layer until the light shines through and it is a completed painting.

One ingredient I like to use in my paintings is Acrylic Glazing Medium, this allows me to create many layers of transparent colours, and the light shines through them like stained glass. The old masters did a lot of glazing in their paintings, and I think this creates a more luminous effect.

I use a combination of synthetic sauble brushes, and hog hair bristle brushes. The bristle brushes are used more for creating texture and scrape thick paint across the canvas, whereas the synthetic saubles are used more for glazing or slightly tinting a colour.

To me, my art represents the beauty of nature, and our innate need to see the beauty of the natural world. In today’s age, we spend most of our time in doors. It is very important that we take time out of our busy lives to see the beauty of nature. I feel that by creating paintings, I am offering people an escape from their stressful lives, and an opportunity to feel a connection with the natural world. hope that by creating artwork I can expose more people to the beauty of nature, and inspire them to create artwork of their own. I also hope that by creating artwork of nature, it will also inspire people to go to wild locations like lakes, rivers and forests and take in the awe inspiring beauty of nature.