Monday, April 20, 2009

Getting Back To Being An Artist



I have always considered myself to be very fortunate: having amazing parents that pushed me to follow my dreams. They were always inspiring me to do the things I wanted to do. It did not take them that long to figure out I wanted to be an artist, so they put me in art school at the age of nine.

This was just to learn the basics of drawing. I loved it, and spent a couple of years going to classes. It was then that my dad realized I was ready for something more serious and enrolled me in the Swain School of Design. This peaked my interest in art and was my first exposure to sculpture. After attending classes for a year I started to produce my own works on a regular basis.

After spending several years in college studying art I saw someone making an ice sculpture and was hooked. I then focused every waking hour to learning the ins and outs of how to successfully sculpt ice. This led to a great career doing something I truly loved. One day I saw an ad for a stone sculptor position and jumped on it. The medium was alabaster and it wasn't long before I understood how to work with stone. I spent a couple years sculpting ice in the early morning hours then going to my stone sculpture job for the rest of the day. I'll never forget how proud my parents were to see me living my dream.

Over the years I had also made a lot of paintings, mostly in acrylic. Then one day after my father had passed away I found some of his VCR tapes and realized he had recorded almost every Bob Ross show that was aired. I began watching the tapes every day, mostly because there are not too many good shows on TV. This inspired me to go out and buy a set of oil paints, brushes and stretched canvases. I was always amazed by the fact that Bob Ross could paint so fast and challenged myself to be able to keep up with him. This took a while, but eventually I could keep up and learned a lot in the process.

Painting with oil is one of my favorite mediums. The performance of oil paint makes it a pleasure to use. It is easier to produce real looking effects and gradients than with any other paint medium. One aspect is the length of time it takes to dry. This can help when you want to take your time as well as if you need to take a break. This can be a drawback if you want to paint a base layer that does not blend with the foreground, if you are impatient or want to sell a piece, as it needs to dry for as long as a few weeks. The opposite is true of acrylic paint: you have to paint in a timely fashion, and clean your brushes more often because it tends to dry in minutes versus days. I have created a lot more sculpture than paintings in my time as an ice sculptor and stone sculptor. The more I paint the more I enjoy it and want to continue painting.

I have been an artist for as long as I can remember and I took some time off to follow a dream: which was to fly. I started designing wingsuits and quickly became very well known in the skydiving community as an innovator in the sport. It wasn't until I had traveled around the world selling my suits for a few years, that I started to miss being an artist. I have now made the decision to go back to my roots and pursue a career as an artist.

It has been very fun designing wingsuits and teaching people how to fly them, as almost everyone has dreams about flying. Many of my students have told me that jumping a wingsuit was the best experience of their life. I have no intentions of quitting wingsuit flying, just slowing down a little bit, to spend more time creating art.

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