I've not looked at the one picture in this account in ages. I created it as a student excercise in highschool. The original is about a 18 inches or so in size and composed using different pencil and pen & ink techniques.

Looking at this drawing, I find myself comparing my current skill level to the skill level of my much younger 16 year old self. I am much less patient now. Many times I have to force myself to draw realistically and look at references. That's lazieness. Also, Realism got boring for me. I still love painting portraits and landscapes, but just don't enjoy the tediousness of pencil work.

Artist Statement Rough Draft:

My recent work is comprised of a series of Watercolor and Acrylic paintings in an abstract expressionistic style that embodies an intense emotionalism I can not achieve with realism. I don't want to describe my grief and joy with a realistic subject; I want to depict the emotions as moving changing almost alien creations. Where do they originate? Where do they end? Why are they here? They are unnecessary seemingly random decoration, and yet each fills a blank hopelessly boring canvas. Each creates an environment out of the "nice" beige, "bored" gray and "clinical" white of our surroundings, drawing the eye to it's flamboyant melodramatic display. The eye skips the neutrals and jumps into the almost chaotic disturbing image of an emotional breakdown. Amid the chaotic flow of colour is a repitition and order that lies hidden like a broken orchid bud floating on a pool of water. A closer look shows a not so random logical emotional flow from one painting into another, gradually opening. A pale umber stain reveals a moment of personal experimentation when I attempted to paint while drinking. Even in this state, I seem unable to fling off the inhibitions that weld my pencil into the flowing lines of a french curve. It's frustrating, it's addictive and yet it's strikingly beautiful. Random non-artistic strangers seem as compelled as I to look on the reality show display embarressing itself on my canvas. I can not explain it, except to say "it's only a doodle." It's a self-preserving doodle that has wrapped my mind, heart and soul into a protective cocoon. The day I first drew that doodle I understood for the first time in my life the art of Vincent Van Gogh. It's the day Vincent Van Gogh met William Morris in my head. Finally, after five years of drawing a doodle, I am able to find interest and joy in depicting life not as musical emotion but in more subjective images.