Most of my paintings have figures in them.  They are portraits. Portraits of our lives.  The people are you, me, the guy walking down the street, anyone.  My home is filled with paintings that have people in them and the majority, if not all of the work, is not of anyone that I know.  So why paint people?  For one thing, one can never be bored or run out of material.  It’s endless.  I love watching people!

Museums are filled with paintings that include people and despite our not necessarily knowing them we find ourselves standing, staring, and taking them in.  We’re drawn in.  The light?  The story? A memory? A desired moment? Whatever  it is, something  holds us and keeps us in front of the work.  I go through life as if walking through a museum, something catches my eye and I am drawn. If lucky my camera catches the physical moment and I paint that which drew me in, captivated me.  That moment has so many possibilities as to what you the viewer sees and what I saw.

Look through my work and keep moving until something grabs you and you must stop and look.

I believe the majority of artists struggle their entire life; both financial and in their expression as artists.  Artists are driven by something within, always growing, changing, second guessing one’s work, wishing to see a piece “for the first time with fresh eyes”, longing for critiques and the list goes on and on.  I do find myself asking, “am I on the right road?” When this happens it causes you to stop and think and look around you. There’s so much art out there, good and bad and it all qualifies as art.  One that has grabbed my attention at times, because of its success (financial success) is resort art.  Some artists have become quite rich in this arena, they’ve figured out the “formula”, once that’s done it’s pretty easy to stay ahead of the game, for a short time at least.  They won’t be written in any art history books, a line or two will be mentioned in the resort’s history; their ego and bank account will have been well fed while alive.

This piece, “Selling Out” is about that.  It’s  going for the gold, getting the kudos we all need; recognition, a rock star in the art world, even if only with the resorts and their guests who have been taken in, dazzled by the sleek galleries.   They will be rewarded financially for their art.  I do believe most of us sell out, some more, some less and for some this is the art that they like doing.

This piece catches the artist, me, in the act of changing my path drastically and selling …selling my soul, my being… joining the resort artists leaving behind the piles of art that surround and accumulate from my passion to paint and not for money.  A note here, I haven’t sold out, just a fleeting thought expressed on canvas.