After taking a couple of years off for health and financial reasons from 2005-2007, this was the first fine art painting I did upon my return. It expresses the difficulties of those years and the uncertainty of returning to fine art and earning enough money to provide for my young family after a move to Florida. On the computer screen is portrait #1: a successful expressive painting of the past that ended up in the Indiana State Museum collection. Portrait #2 is the present, with me at my desk, weighed down by doubt and exhaustion. Portrait #3 is an alla prima piece on the french easel that looks out to the future with uncertainty. I was painting in a cramped laundry room space in a rental house. I had just passed my 40th birthday the year before, and the children's birthday drawings still hang on the wall above my desk. Above the french easel hangs a calendar (not a clock) denoting the passage of years, not hours.
The result...
• First Place Winner of the Portrait and Figure Category in The Artists Magazine 2009 Annual competition
Featured in the December 2009 Issue, Pgs. 52-53.
• Selected as one of the "21 Over 31" in Southwest Artists 2010 competition - November issue, Pg. 97
• As the Grand Prize Winner of the 2011 American Artist Magazine Cover Competition, this painting was included in the article on pages 34-36 in the June issue of that year.
After taking a couple of years off for health and financial reasons from 2005-2007, this was the first fine art painting I did upon my return. It expresses the difficulties of those years and the uncertainty of returning to fine art and earning enough money to provide for my young family after a move to Florida. On the computer screen is portrait #1: a successful expressive painting of the past that ended up in the Indiana State Museum collection. Portrait #2 is the present, with me at my desk, weighed down by doubt and exhaustion. Portrait #3 is an alla prima piece on the french easel that looks out to the future with uncertainty. I was painting in a cramped laundry room space in a rental house. I had just passed my 40th birthday the year before, and the children's birthday drawings still hang on the wall above my desk. Above the french easel hangs a calendar (not a clock) denoting the passage of years, not hours.
The result...
• First Place Winner of the Portrait and Figure Category in The Artists Magazine 2009 Annual competition
Featured in the December 2009 Issue, Pgs. 52-53.
• Selected as one of the "21 Over 31" in Southwest Artists 2010 competition - November issue, Pg. 97
• As the Grand Prize Winner of the 2011 American Artist Magazine Cover Competition, this painting was included in the article on pages 34-36 in the June issue of that year.