Andrew Hope

My interest in painting began several years ago due to art shows. For years I went to every show for miles around. I found that my interest was paintings in oil or acrylic, and thought I could do that. So I did, and sold my paintings in local art shows for a number of years. I am entirely self-taught except for spending time in other painter’s tents, figuring out how they got that look. For canvas paintings, I make the stretcher frames, and stretch the canvas myself to ensure a properly tight canvas with square corners. I make my own panels for painting also. My paintings usually deal with southwest Florida and things that grow here. This includes brown pelicans in their various adult colors.
A former career as an electro-optical design engineer was useful as I had already been working with imaging for many years. Selling at art shows has put my paintings into the collections of buyers from the U.S., Canada and Europe.