Mice on Orange Drawing

I've loved drawing and painting for as long as I can remember. No matter what's gone on in my life, art has always been a constant. Some years ago, I discovered oil painting and fell in love with the medium. I also during that period discovered my voice as a painter. Most of the time I am drawing from observation (from things such as my collection of seashells), or from photographs I found. Drawing for me is the ultimate skill honer - as I always say, once you master drawing, you can paint anything. Van Gogh, Cecily Brown, Darby Milbrath and Hayley Barker are some of my favorite artists. I love baroque art (its energy and spirit) and strive to make paintings that have the rigor of the male and the sensiblity of the female combined. I believe a true artist doesn't create in some vacuum, removed from society, but must show interest and delight in the work of other fellow artists of their times and from the past. I studied Painting and Drawing at Concordia, but I've rejected much of my education, except perhaps some things I learned in Art History classes, as I do not identify myself as a Post-Modern artist. I believe that the relativism and ugliness and nihilistic outlook on the human and art and society that pervaded much of Post-Modernism is coming to its close, and a new era of art is about to start. We are the generation that will shape the transitory period toward this new era. I am excited to be alive not only as an artist, but as a human being in this time of history.