Subject Matter
The first step of my work is to choose a subject. I’ve tended to avoid portraits and traditional still life for various reasons. When I was a kid I could draw well, but I avoided faces because they didn’t ever turn out as true as I’d liked. I think portrait artists are incredibly talented. Maybe I’ll find my niche one day in the way that I want a portrait to look. The classical portrait painters from the Renaissance era and Europe painted the rich and powerful in both rich and powerful colors. For an culturally incredible contemporary twist on this check out Kehinde Wiley our of New York. So until my talents and creativity (how to paint perfect wrinkle lines, not paint crooked eyes, or spin something cool out of a portrait) progress further, I’m be sticking to landscape and still life. In choosing subject matter, however, I tend to see past people’s faces to what they are doing. I want to study and show how people exist including the spaces we create to exist. This brings me to two primary subject matters over time. First, the natural environment around us. National Parks and Western landscapes that are untouched offer an unrivaled beauty to me. Second, the landscapes (things and spaces) we have built around us as humans. This includes the unintended demise and collateral effects of these spaces that we may not want to look at. Roads, infrastructure, benches, factories. Gravel is currently something I am studying both because of it’s unrealized ubiquity as well as it’s often rich value and color. But that’s the high-toned subjective art talk. I really like this subject because parking lots and roads are objectively repulsive and unpalatable. They are stained with gasoline, oil, and the occasional smashed french fry or cigarette. I purposely choose unpalatable to be an ironic word choice. To paint some gravel roads I’ve had to pull out “all-of-the-paints” in my palate.
Next, perspective is an important element when choosing subject matter, but it is distinctly different part of the process. More on that later…