putting art in my life

After playing with art. I tried oils. In College, Old Dominion University, I took courses in water color, and printmaking, for some reason I did not take oil painting. Another course that I took was basic design. We disdainfully called it early morning cut and paste. Little did I know that this was one of the most valuable courses that I ever took. It seemed too much like play. It was only many years later that when working on my paintings that I realized how helpful it actually was.

I was able to take on balance, color, design, and depth perception without much difficulty. I also have to give credit to hanging around my Dad's Art Gallery. Dad had let a studio in the Gallery out to a portrait painter, Ted Tevis. Mr. Tevis took me under his wing and gave me instructions in perspective. He went to great pains to show me the vanishing point using strings to extend lines well off the paper where I was drawing. I was about fourteen and thought that he had gone to extreme; however, it was a lesson well taught. I learned about aerial and atmospheric perspective in Art History classes by observing older paintings and having my Art History Professor, Parker Lesley, point this out in Renaissance Art.

One weekend with my family I particularly remember. Dad brought in easels and oil paints and the whole family painted together. We used photos from National Geographic Magazine to paint by, and I painted a Greek Fishing boat on a beach. Dad took time to instruct and we all enjoyed the process and being together.

I also remember a time even earlier when I was recuperating from one of my operations, as an aftermath of polio. Mother gave me paper a pencils and had me draw a china cat that my grandfather had given me, She showed me how to look a something that I wanted to draw on paper. After trying very hard and much erasing, I turned out a nice drawing of this cat licking his paw. I still have that drawing somewhere. It was hard won and I was about nine years old. I was proud enough to put it in my scrap book. One other thing that I tried as a young child was painting by numbers. I failed miserly, because I could not just fill in the spots I had to do one better. The vase of flowers ended up to be no a paint by numbers, but a Leigh original.