Artist Statement

I love to paint.

Wait? That’s it?

Yes! It’s honest. There’s no need for fancy wordsmithing to belabor what I seek to do as an artist. This is it. Nothing more to it. I just love to paint.

Frankly, I have never been a fan of artist statements. Such statements run the gamut from being extraordinarily pretentious to embarrassingly awkward. I’m much more interested in the story of the artist. So, what follows is a very small fragment of my story.

And, oh, by now you’ve probably noticed that I write in the first person, too.

Who Am I?

I call myself an artist. That’s artist with a lower-case “a.”

Only a few can rightly use or have the term Artist (with a capital A) applied to them. I’m NOT one of them. Nor am I the “world’s leading expert" in [insert label here]. What I am is this: a student – a long time, hopefully forever, student of the arts and art-making. I call myself an artist – not because I am – but because it’s my aspiration.

My interest in creativity and the visual arts goes much farther back. As a teenager, I bought a Nikon Nikkormat FT2 35mm film camera. I still have that camera. My parents had a Bell & Howell Super 8mm movie camera that I experimented with. Photography and filmmaking, and later digital graphic design and video production became my outlet for creating visual art. In time, though, the analog, physical, and tactile nature of oil paint became my focus. The patina and texture of oil paint have a unique beauty all of their own that speaks to me. When I stand in a gallery or museum to view a painting it strikes me that there is a physical connection with the artist that created the painting. Leaning in close to a painting I am thrilled to glimpse a fingerprint of the artist, or perhaps a loose hair from a brush long since fossilized in the oxidized linseed oil, or an inadvertently captured insect who haplessly landed on the painting. As I stand in front of the painting, I marvel that I am standing in the position of the artist when they painted it. I am, in effect, seeing it through their eyes!

However, it was a long road before oil painting became a significant part of my life.

Upon graduating high school, I attended Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida. I had developed a strong interest in aviation so I thought that was the place to go. But, as things worked out, I ran out of money and returned home near Atlanta, Georgia. I soon took on a job at a local engineering firm. That turned out to be a good move for two reasons: 1) I would enter software development right at the beginning of the micro-computing revolution, and 2) I met a young woman who would later become my wife and the mother of our children. We were married in 1979. Our beautiful children soon followed.

I’m getting ahead of myself just a tad. At the engineering firm I worked as a computer operator of two IBM Mainframe System 360 computers. Since computer operation didn’t command my attention all day, I decided to learn how to program them. I had learned Fortran in college. I tackled Assembler and COBOL. Management took notice of my initiative and offered me a promotion to become a programmer. The timing was fortuitous for me and my young family. It was an exciting time to be at essentially the tail end of one computing technology (mainframe computers) and on the cusp of the new microcomputer revolution, and the internet that would soon follow. It was also a lucrative field to be in at the time. By 1985 I had formed my own software development company and began to take on clients. Painting was the farthest thing from my mind at that time.

Photography and filmmaking continued to be a life-long hobby that served as a creative outlet for me when I wasn’t working in technology. My wife and I enjoyed traveling. Our extended vacations on the road gave me an opportunity to explore my love of photography. In time, we had three beautiful children – a daughter and two sons – and they always joined us wherever we went. Instead of waiting until we were old and retired, we bought a motorhome. Our children loved traveling in the motorhome as we explored the American West. Many a summer was spent in a campground near Teton Village. We would spend time hiking in the Tetons and take day trips into Yellowstone National Park. We enjoyed rafting trips down the Snake River. Being close to Jackson, some mornings we took the kids to enjoy big stacks of pancakes at Bubba’s. Later in the evening we would go watch the Jackson Town Square Shootout show, visit shops, and go on stagecoach rides. It was a great time to live and soak in the West. Books on Lewis and Clark, John Wesley Powell, Thomas Moran, and others were always close by to wind up an evening of activity.

A Life-Changing Experience

On one such excursion to Jackson Hole, I noticed that there were several art galleries around the square. I had never been in an art gallery. Intrigued, one late afternoon I went back to the square with the intent of visiting the art galleries while my wife stayed at camp with the kids. This would prove to be a life changing experience.

The first gallery I went into was Legacy Gallery. There were only two people in the gallery at the time I timidly walked in. A woman who worked in the gallery warmly welcomed me. She explained the current show featuring a gorgeous collection of Western landscapes and cowboy paintings. The paintings were extraordinary! She asked me if I would like to meet the artist. Though nervous about it, I said yes. The artist was the only other person in the gallery when I first walked in. She took me over to a man dressed in black wearing a black cowboy hat and said, “This is Bill Anton.” He kindly greeted me and answered my awkward questions. That was my first entry into an art gallery and Bill Anton was the first professional artist I had ever met. I knew then that I wanted to be an oil painter!

It would be several more years before that would be possible. Meanwhile, the internet was exploding, and building websites became a focus for my software company. In addition to making websites, my clients needed more services. They needed help with content creation. This included copy, graphic design, photography, audio production, and video production. Finally, the moment came when my interest in the visual arts became a core service in my business. The rapid and affordable development of digital photography and video accelerated my involvement in media creation. I was soon editing videos in Apple’s Final Cut Pro Studio. The editing work led to video production work. In 2010, I started a video production podcast. At first it was called The Digital Convergence podcast, and a few years later it was renamed The Artful Camera. That podcast connected me with many other filmmakers. It was an extraordinary learning experience. It was a highly effective way for me to learn more about the craft of producing videos. That podcast remained in production for about ten years.

Focus on Painting

My interest in painting remained latent within me during the first decades of my adult life. I dabbled from time to time with drawing, sketching, and painting in acrylics and oil paints, but never enough to be any good at it. My software business, raising children till they were grown, and doing extensive volunteer work took up so much of my time that there was little time left for painting. Eventually, our children moved out one by one as they completed high school and college and got married. About 2016, my wife encouraged me to scale back my business and devote more time to painting. Heeding her advice, I scaled back my business by letting go of most of my clients and began to paint more.

As I started painting more, I got frustrated. I found my skills woefully lacking and slow to develop. I decided it was time to take a workshop! I heard about a workshop at the Booth Museum with Matt Smith – one of my favorite Western landscape painters. I figured if I was going to learn, I might as well start with the best.

There was just one problem though. His class was full! I was put on a waiting list for the Matt Smith workshop at the Booth Museum in Cartersville, Georgia. Being put on the waiting list paid off – I got a call that an opening had become available, and I jumped at the opportunity to attend. While excited at the prospect, I was also extremely nervous and insecure. In retrospect, I really was not far enough along in my painting skills to take full advantage of such an advanced workshop. However, Matt was effective in teaching the fundamentals and he encouraged me to keep at it. The lessons I learned in his workshop helped me get on the right track in learning to paint. I would later take another class with Matt and also with artist Ralph Oberg, another artist whom I admired and who had such a profound effect on me. Ralph would go on to prove to be a kind and encouraging mentor to me. Both Matt and Ralph emphasized the importance of painting outdoors from life. Consequently, I began to spend more time painting outdoors, which provided another excellent reason for my wife and I to travel.

After taking the wonderful workshops at the Booth Museum, it occured to me that I should do a podcast about painting. Podcasting had proven to be a fantastic way to learn more about filmmaking and share that knowledge with others. So why not do a podcast on painting? Thus, The Artful Painter podcast was born with the tagline: “Art lessons for artists, collectors, and people who love art.”

Always Enjoy the Process!

Producing The Artful Painter podcast has been well worth the effort. While writing this, I’ve had the privilege of interviewing nearly 70 different artists. Listening to their inspiring stories and sharing those stories with others has been a profound experience. Perhaps one day, I’ll write a book based on those interviews.

After publishing 73 episodes of The Artful Painter, I put the podcast on an indefinite pause. In 2022, my wife and I moved from Georgia to Colorado. We bought and remodeled an old farmhouse near downtown Montrose, Colorado. The project took much longer than expected. Despite the challenges, we finally finished the remodel and finalized our move in the summer of 2023. I thought that once I was settled in our new home, I would get back to publishing the podcast, but that didn’t happen. Oh, I tried! However, with Storm King Mountain, the Cimmaron Ridge, Mount Sneffels and the San Juan range all visible from my office window, I decided it was time to focus entirely on painting. I needed a huge mental reset after going through the isolation and anxiety of the pandemic, the hard work of remodeling our home in Colorado, selling our home of 40 years in Georgia, facing unexpected challenges, and finally moving into our new home. Whew! It was time to get back outdoors.

Of course, there is so much more to the story. If you subscribe to my newsletter, listen to The Artful Painter podcast archive, and follow my blog, more of the story will unfold. I hope you all will join me in my life-long journey of learning to paint. I look forward to hearing your story, too. You can always send me an email.

As I travel this road of learning to paint, I can hear Ralph Oberg’s voice as he spoke these encouraging words to me when I last visited him in Colorado: “Always enjoy the process.”

I intend to do just that.