The Reboot

I did not one day decide that I wanted to start painting again. I did not one day decide to put down my mouse like the now proverbial dropping of the microphone and leave the business stage to pick up a brush and palette. When I received the first inklings that I wanted to eventually reboot my art career I quite frankly did not literally know where to start, because to start where I left off as a young man seemed irrelevant to the person I am now. After a couple decades of being pickled in the varying currents of the human experience, my view of life, like everyone else, has both deepened and become more subtle in expression.

When I was in university I worked primarily with found object sculpture (worm eaten driftwood and rusted metal machine parts) and multimedia photography (in a time where digital photography was not even a dream and work was done in dark rooms and chemical baths – I can still smell the stop bath). A brief description of it would be that it was theatrical and dramatic in nature, filled with ethereal and mythological references. I am still proud of that work, but getting older has made me more contemplative and when I started doing art full time again, I wanted to get past the gymnastic work of focusing on the creative use of unorthodox materials. I desired to focus on the subject and my experience of it. Plus, it is messy work and I am usually in enough trouble with my wife.

I originally was trained as an oil painter, and folding this old medium into new experiences appealed to me. The only thing to settle on was the subject matter. I have traveled to many places and my most profound experiences have almost always involved my environment and in particular the great outdoors. I have always suspected I have a built in Feng Shui meter as my moods are heavily influenced by the landscapes I visit. So the slow stumbling reboot that I started several years ago has transitioned into my current full time passion.

And it is a lot less messy.