Oil painting stole my heart in junior year of high school. I found it to be difficult, but not as difficult as I found acrylic painting to be at the time. My painting style has changed greatly since then, and is still constantly evolving.
I tend to focus on portraiture in my oil paintings. I find the relationship between skin color and light to be fascinating. Oil painting allows me to blend and experiment with both realistic and surrealistic hues. It is amazing to see the subtleties in the human face and the way color, light, and expression can tell a story. I paint people I know and love, or imaginary characters. I also tend to paint one self portrait a year. This was accidental, but I’m happy that it keeps happening. Creating oil self portraits has allowed me to see how differently I view and depict myself each year. It makes me feel as though I can see how I’ve grown physically and metaphysically, and allows me to celebrate who I am in each era. Watercolor painting came back into my life last summer when I took a watercolor workshop Adelphi course. In this course, the wonderful professor retaught me how to work with watercolor and inspired me to bring it back into my art practice. Since then I have been painting landscapes from photographs that I have taken. Within each piece, I try to focus on the softness and subtleties in nature. Each of these paintings bring me such a strong sense of peace and calmness. On many occasions, I use a white gel pen to add final details to the paintings, especially when painting a body of water. The gentle and quiet subject matter of the pieces complement the delicate nature of watercolor painting. |