Painting Thoughts

Hey there, another day, another blog!

I cannot promise substance every day (though I'll try) but I'm determined to get this thing up in the air so off we go...

Here's a painting I did about a year ago, it is a pretty typical New Zealand view. Several things about this painting are unique. First off it has conical pines in it. I try to avoid conical pines as they present many composition issues. Beautiful as they are I find they often make me feel cornered in my skies.

Another feature of this painting is the dirt road. Many people ask me why I don't paint moire things like fences and houses in my work. The reason is that I prefer the landscape to speak for it self. It seems that any man made feature steals the show focusing the apprehenders attention in ways that I as the paintings creator do not like. The huge exception to this is paths or roads. In my view they fold right in to the landscape as well as direct to eye in pleasant ways.

Speaking of pleasant., I enjoy creating pleasant images that sooth the viewer. I'm certainly not saying that that's the only type of image that anyone should paint, but for me it's the best use of my time and talent. Just for the record I've been employed to create images like this...

I know, hard to believe it's the same artist eh? Anyway just making a point that at this time I feel the world needs soothing reflective art so that is what I enjoy painting. I did enjoy rendering the dino above also but really that's far more of a technical expression. Btw some of you may have seen this dinosaur on a tee shirt if you knew a kid and went shopping at JC pennies or the like about six years ago...

Why paint?

I have been creating art for 42 years. In that time, I have worked with many different medias. For a long time I was content to use pencil and pen ink to create drawings. The mastery of rendering form in light and shade was for quite a while enough.

With the advent of the computer I began applying colour to my art work in both in the virtual realm and from without. The freedom that I felt working in the virtual world was incredible! I could change anything I wanted at any time. I could also add and remove things at will. It was amazing, a revelation really...

For many years I utilized the skills that I'd learned in creating artwork on the computer to make a living as a graphic illustrator. I found this work to be quite engaging and fulfilling for a time. However, I eventually began to feel a yearning for a deeper connection with my art and it's apprehenders. This desire is what eventually drove me to study painting in oil.

When I first started painting in oils in 2007 I found that many of the skills that I had acquired through a lifetime of creating artwork were applicable in this medium. I also learned that many of the things that work for me in the virtual realm did not work well when I was creating artwork by hand using oil paints and a hardwood substrate.

While creating an actual physical painting I am aware that a transference occurs. It seems this is a transference of energy and consciousness between myself the painting and the apprehender of the painting. Speaking only for myself I do not find this occurs when creating artwork digitally and printing it out. As far as I know this phenomenon exists only with original artworks being viewed by a person in the presence of the original art .

This is a fascinating and rewarding endeavour and is an interesting reason to paint as well. There are more reasons to paint of course and perhaps we will go further into those in future blog posts.

A Newer new dawn...

Michael here. Been meaning to start blogging again. It seems that a focused approach has not worked in the past so I've decided to make the blog about anything I'm interested in talking about.

I will deffo do some painting
stuff here but also i want to talk about being an american artist residing in New Zealand and any other topic that comes to mind or hand...