John Singer Sargent and the portrait Painting

I didn't start to paint until turning 40 years of age. Actually it was on my birthday that I remember this conversation I had with myself: "you've been given the gift of art but have not opened that gift." It was that simple and from that day on I committed myself relentlessly to find out what I had inside as an artist. I started taking classes locally with a housewife in Colorado and got my real first feel of what it was like to move paint around on the canvas. There was no formal way to study in Denver at the time so I founded the Art Students League in 1987 so I would have a place to study art. Then when I found a weakness in my art I focused on doing what I could to strengthen myself. To study composition I went to the Musee d'Orsay when I was in Paris and sketched each of the Impressionist canvases they had so I would better understand what makes for a good composition. When I wanted to learn about color I read 5 books on the subject, spent many hours doing color charts and then experimented by taking color to it's most far out extreme -only to wind up bringing it back to the point where it is now. When figures were my weakness I took figure drawing and anatomy classes. And to this day I'm still learning. My palette is called the Rubens Palette - not sure why, but I love it and altered it slightly to add different colors. So now it's composed of yellow ochre, cadmium yellow light, cadmium orange, cadmium red light, quinacridone, platimum violet, phthalo blue and phthalo green (these two are very powerful and took quite some time to get control of them - they seem to want to get on everything like carpets and bed spreads and clothing!, and of course black and white. I have also taught figure painting classes in NYC, Provence, Paris, San Miguel de Allende and demonstrated painting the figure at the Salmagundi Club in NYC and the Fairfax Art League in Virginia.