An Artist's Inspiration

I am sometimes asked what my inspiration is for creating certain paintings. My usual response is that almost everyone of my pieces has a story to it - sometimes a short story, sometimes it's a little more involved. For example, my "Woodland Friends" painting is of the view from my studio looking south across Alpine Lake and to the mountains beyond. And, living in the mountains at a lake, we have nearly every specie of animal found in this area coming across my view from time to time. So, I wanted to create a fun, fantasy painting of this view with as many of these critters as I could. One little boy at the Autumn Glory Festival stood in front of the painting and counted them - he said there are 44! Wow, even I didn't know that.

Like most artists, I am constantly looking around me for inspiration, and I never go anywhere without my camera. I have a very large library of reference photos I use to compose a new work. Sometimes I'll pick a photo of a tree that is just right for my composition. Sometimes it will be a landscape which then is the beginning of a story I want to tell. To me, this is one of the most exciting parts of being an artist - to create a visual story that elicits some type of emotional response. Again, referring to one of my recent, popular paintings, "Manatees", I wanted to portray just how playful and beautiful this animal is, even though most of us only see it from above the water. I made this an under water scene, and portrayed the sea animals as cute and charming. The painting was accepted into the 2008 WV Watercolor Society annual juried exhibit. Although it did not win an award, the judge paid me a great compliment. She said when she looked at the manatees and the painting, she couldn't help but smile! Now, that's a great compliment.

And finally, I often get inspiration from people I meet. It's not unusual for someone to ask me if I have ever painted a particular subject, and that might be the impetus to create a new painting. Or, I have many wonderful friends and acquaintances who are terrific photographers. Either they will share their photos with me or I will ask if I may use one of theirs in one of my paintings. My dear old friend, Patty Bulliss who lives in Glen Arbor, MI is one of these people. She took a whole series of photos of wonderful sunsets seen from the deck of their house looking West over the water towards Sleeping Bear Dunes. I have painted a couple of amazing paintings from those photos and look forward to giving her one of them as a gift for sharing her talent with me.

The fall and winter months are a great time for me to get productive again. I've so many topics I want to paint, I only hope I can produce them before next art show season begins. Thanks for being interested in my art work. I appreciate it.

So, in a nutshell, I'm always being inspired.