Portrait
Teabag
Halls Building in Providence
fter graduating from RISD in 2006, I’ve made Rhode Island my home. Within Providence’s artistic community I’ve been painting at live model groups for six years. Painting a portrait almost every Monday night was just the practice I needed to refine my skills. Along with coffee shop drawings, this has facilitated the bulk of my continued artistic development.
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The majority of my inspiration comes from observation of the everyday. Perhaps it was the regular camping trips I took growing up that developed my connection to the natural world. I’m a constant appreciator of the simplest things, from the curls of steam above my tea cup to the dance of shadows cast by a tree in the wind. With expressive brushwork, my aim is to infuse my paintings with the feelings of energy and excitement that I have for these everyday wonders.
I strive to make pictures that pull the viewer out of the tunnel vision of their daily routine, awakening them to the awe and appreciation of life’s simple beauties. For me, this requires some kind of emotional connection
to the picture. Light and brushwork are a few ways to make this connection, but choosing the right moment, the right pose, the right expression of the subject, is the real key. My painting, Ukulele Singer, is a good example of this. Getting just the right expressive posture was crucial to communicating the dream-like enchantment in which the girl is lost. I feel confident this is what attracted the judge when the painting received the 2013 “Best of Show” award in the National Oil & Acrylic Painters’ Society’s annual “Best of America” exhibition.
As much as I appreciate the everyday world, sometimes I like to go beyond, and this is where my illustrative work comes in. In addition to painting for gallery shows, portraits, and private commissions, I also work as a freelance illustrator, painting pictures of fantastic myths and stories. It seems to me that getting caught up in the mysteries of a fictional story enliven the mind in a way that continues when returning to everyday life. So, on many levels, my work is about appreciating the natural world and our existence in it.
Vol. 2 Issue 3 | 11
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