What Scenes Inspire Me

   Through the course of time spent with painting in watercolor, I've taken on various subjects,

usually excluding people and animals, that give varying results. In the end I've found the outdoors and nature to be the most moving for me. Let's face it, most people like the unbound feeling of being outside. Travel brochures rightfully concentrate on the outdoor scenes in warm, intoxicating sunlight! The indoors are often associated with being cramped, secluded, confined. Those who live it the temperate zone are often pining away over the seemingly endless Winter and long for

its overdue end.

 

   Landscapes would have to be my main inspiration and choice of subject. And this can be any season, with Summer being the favorite. Though, I do love the bare tree look amongst the snow, gracing the sky with lacy branches and twigs. The elements I gravitate to the most are trees. They can be bold, tall, short, wispy, mangly, spindly, etc, all of which beg me to capture their many personalities. Their shapes, foliages, colors and color changes; their trunk and branch structures and linear peculiarities -all of these get my attention and respect. I have even been called a "tree whisperer"!  Trees and other plants ask very little and give so much. They also require less exactness than most structures. And there's just something about the feeling of space - the feeling of being surrounded by nature.  Ask any hiker!

   That said, I do enjoy geometry, especially the menagerie of angles and interlocking shapes. The

contrast of nature and hard, straight-lined manmade structures has its own merit and delight. But to go and detail intricate architecture, no, that's for a steadier more accurate hand than mine.

I am rather humbled by nature and this would have to be my main passion. I always think of color,

shape and texture in my representational work. Nature provides that for me. And the one thing        I'm always after,  whether in the studio or painting en plein air,  is the lack of geometry in nature. This I call "Perfect Randomity". When something doesn't look right I change it. It's something I have to do. The challenge before me is how to retain the different quirks of nature and maintain good design. Having obtained that, I'm more confident I've properly delivered my message. 
And the message is what it's all about.