| What drew you to art in the first place? |
| | I have been interested in art as long as I can remember. At the age of 5 I had majorly colored with crayons my play room, all 4 walls as high as I could reach.
My mother said I had to work on it for hours. Why did I go to such an extent working at something that I knew that I supposed not to do. I think it was in my blood at that time. I was punished and put in the room to scrub the walls. My mother said if she knew that this was my direction in life she would have never punished me.
Later years I was 14 or 15 I had purchased a cheap set of oils. Right away I started working on a painting. I would dream about the painting that I had started. and would get out of bed in the middle of the night to work on the focus of my dreams.
Art do I have it or does it have me? |
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| When did you decide to pursue a career in art, and what went into making that decision? |
| | I believe the main step in pursuing my career in art is when I attended the local vocational school and had attended commercial art for 2 years.
I had returned to the school years later and was a substitute for my teacher Mr. Harris whose health was failing. |
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| You have been working in the art field for more than 30 years, what are some of the biggest lessons you have learned along the way? |
| | One of the biggest lessons that I had learned and really opened my eyes is the boundaries that one sets on one's self. This line drawn in the sand may as well be a wall of stone.
My airbrush career started as an artist for Cedar Point Amusement park, the third largest amusement park in the country. The process was to complete basic designs and work in custom work in the spare time. Lines of people ordering basic designs that left little spare time.
This process required a lot of attention to customer service. I think I have been able to apply the lessons I have learned over the past 30 years in business to my canvas paintings. With over 800 total feedbacks from art buyers, I have a 100%
positive rating. |
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| How do you make the transition from airbrush to more traditional mediums to something more experimental like using a broom? |
| | Although I was never formally trained in painting on canvas. My airbrushing has had a profound effect. The smooth graduation of colors and even some of the strokes I use can be directly related to my airbrushing style.
As far as the broom story, I have done extensive experimentation with many different objects to achieve unique styles and textures. I was finishing a rather large canvas, and my wet into wet style requires alot of stooping over the canvas. With my back aching I sat down to take a break. While looking around, I saw an old broom with a handle. So I picked it up, cleaned it out, wet the end and proceeded to
finish the sky in the painting, which ended up being bought by a professor of bio-chemistry in Stockholm, Sweden. With that piece of success with a normally unused brush, I planned to make it a larger part of my work. |
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| What sparked your interest in creating jewelry? |
| | I have always been interested in working with jewelry. Even years ago I had worked with hand-turning opals for a short time. But with my airbrush business my spare time was very limited.
Now that I have another artist working for me who can handle the airbrushing aspect of the business, I now have more free time to experiment in many forms of creative art. This also allows me more time to devote to each painting and piece of jewelry. And with my bad back I welcome any type of art that I can sit down to work with. |
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