Finding inspiration

I was recently chatting with a good friend about artistic subject matter. He said “I love that you can find inspiration in places I remember less-than-fondly”. I know what he means: How can you paint such depressing scenes? How are you inspired by them?

It’s a huge objective for me — with my art — to convey images with emotion and feeling, but with a subversive or disruptive element of emotion. I want to make the viewer feel uncomfortable enough to keep looking at the scene and to search for meaning. If a deeper meaning isn’t found, then at least some emotions were explored. I believe in work, school, social situations we must step outside of our comfort zones in order to create new opportunity. That principle holds true with art also. I strive to create opportunities for the viewer to explore feelings and emotions. While this is a boring and overwhelmingly popular theme in art, so I must alter the trajectory or path of this experience for the viewer, and make it three-dimensional, through space and time. I want to make a scene stand alone, where you can envision the world and feel the mood around it that is not painted. I often do this with ostensibly depressing scenes. Nuanced framing and the use of perspective help me achieve this.