Growing in my Art

While I was in College I studied under Charles Sibley. Charles was a good friend of my father's and Dad carried some of his paintings in our Gallery. I remember that one day years before, my brother came into the gallery and saw a painting that Charles had done of people. He said quiet loudly,"Who'd want to buy that, the people look dead buried and dug up." Charles was standing there for the full effect.  In spite of this remark,he and my brother later became good friends.

Charles taught me to be free with my art. I took water color from him. I learned to let the paints flow and that there happy circumstances that happen in art. You take advantage of these rather than trying too hard to control the paint. I have not done water colors for years but when I start my oils I am able to use my brush work casually almost abstractly in the early stages. The tough part is knowing when to quit. It is so easy to over do a painting.

Well after college, Charles spent a weekend in the country with just my brother and myself. I believe that I used water colors that weekend. I sketched some with water color crayons applied water and let it run. My colors were bright and fresh.

I drew the flowers from the garden. This led me to doing several free water colors of fresh flowers. I'd plant my gardens with paintings in mind. Dad told me to studying the flower paintings by the impressionist artist, Henri Fantin-Latour. He was known for his wonderful flowers. I copied his work in order to better learn how he did his flowers. Another thing that aided both my brother and myself in our painting skills was the fact that we both did restoration of oil paintings with my Dad in his Gallery. In order to in paint, where a painting has been damaged you have to be able to match your strokes to that of the artist. You learn a lot about painting doing this.

My advise to anyone wanting to paint is to start. The first steps must be taken in any endeavor. You have to start or you'll never do anything. Once you start it is amazing what can be done.