Lioness Head Study Drawing

I am a former professional art conservator. Nearing the 35th spring of my life I had on my back nearly fifteen year long career in painting conservation. A time had come for me to make a decision and start living the live which I believed I had been destined to live. My activity and work as a restorer with each passing year would bring me less and less satisfaction. At the right moment the occasion presented itself and I was hired as a painting animator in the production of "Loving Vincent" the movie. That was quite an opportunity because you can rarely find job as a painter, where you paint all day long. And that was what happened: for 9 poignant months I would paint every day except weekends (some times) for 10 or more hours a day. But only when the production terminated I really started to ponder: what my painting is supposed to be like? Even during my years spend in the field of art conservation I had never stopped exploring diverse artistic ways and experiment with them on my own. The practice and study of art conservation provided me with the knowledge and expertise on different techniques and styles, from the antiquity through Old Masters until the present day art. Through my work I had the possibility to examine directly and in deep many incredible artworks, fresco paintings, oil paintings and mosaics especially in Italy where I lived and worked as a restorer for a few years. I was allowed to paint copies in museums mirroring the original methodology and technique and I became quite dextrous in the fresco technique and even in roman and byzantine mosaic. All that however made that much harder for me to decide which of these should I make my personal theatre of art, which of these is mine the most. In part that question was answered when I was painting for the movie where I regained the joy of painting. The rest I left to my childhood and my original child's dream which was to be a painter and not a restorer or a mosaic maker. With painting that boosted my creativity also my other passions from the young age came to the surface: mathematics, programming and origami design to name just a few of them. Michelangelo Buonarroti has been my ideal as long as I remember so to me it is a bit of a personal disappointment to be more akin in talent type to Leonardo Da Vinci. Of course I am not nearly as excellent as either of them but if I were than they would not be their names to be mentioned here.