Artist Statement

I am strongly considering entering a juried competition in which I send in images to be judged. The process also calls for an Artist Bio and an Artist Statement. I knew what a Bio is (duh), but truly had not heard about Artist Statements. So, I did a little research and took some notes and fashioned one. Wikipedia, by the way, defines Artist Statement as follows, "An artist's statement (or artist statement) is a brief verbal representation (didactic, descriptive, or reflective in nature) created by the artist about his or her own work.

This will be mine. 

ARTIST STATEMENT

I am still discovering what I like best to paint. My artwork has been evolving since I began three winters ago. Acrylics on canvas is the usual, although my best work so far is on illustration board. I started with landscapes, but am now venturing into portraits, still lifes, folk art and hard-to-categorize subjects to challenge myself. While I wonder what would be commercially successful, I continue to paint only subjects which interest me. I have come to appreciate, and look forward to, the occasional, but inevitable 'fixes', i.e. the corrections, reformulations of color and shading as a way of learning and further evolving my work. Most of my varied collection of brushes have found a way to be used, and I discovered sponges and toothbrushes to be useful and interesting additions to my tools. I paint almost exclusively from a photograph of the subject, especially since my work is limited to the five or six coldest months of the year. I generally work from the back to the front and make adjustments along the way. The right type of pattern interests me, whether it's a row of houses, a wet stone roadway in Pompeii, a reptile's eye, an iguana, or a bloodshot human eye. Each of these has resulted in some of my best work so far.

Never having taken a painting lesson except what I've seen on YouTube, I have made improvement as my top priority. I am able to see my own progress and that is exciting.