Water Thicker Than Blood; Part 1 Fine Art Print

I am an American painter currently living in Lagos, Portugal. I am also songwriter, guitarist and professional graphic designer, but it is the lure of the limitless possibilities of painting abstraction that makes it the most daunting and intoxicating creative endeavor to me. Standing before a blank canvas might seem to be simple task, but there are a thousand tiny decisions that have already been made beforehand and an even more complex ritual that unfolds after the first stroke is been applied. Song is verse and chorus; the guitar is scales and notes; graphic design eyes profit with every pixel. Abstract art is blatantly weightless and untethered. With every stroke, there are always new answers and new questions. To progress, one begins to construct a cobbled mass of techniques, rules and judgements...not unlike someone lost at sea...gathering random flotsam and fashioning random items together in order to stay afloat. Every artist is different and coalesces their own interpretation of what it takes to survive this artistic process. So, why would someone put themselves through such a thing? Because artists would rather brave the sharks than drift safely towards an endless soft horizon. One of his biggest artistic influences was my grandfather, Marcel Guenette, who was a golf shoe maker at Footjoy in Brockton, Massachusetts for thirty years: "He could build anything with his hands. He would often be found in his small wood shop in the back yard in Winter Park, Florida. As a child, I would be transfixed as my grandfather constructed all sort of projects from scratch with whatever materials he had laying around. I am inspired to this day by his spirit and ingenuity. I feel that it is important for me to be involved in every aspect of the artwork, from the construction of the homemade frames, stretching house painter drip cloths as my canvas material and finishing most of the artworks with my simple white pine decorative framing." Graphic design is very much a team effort with the client and the application of many of the principles are invaluable working through the painting process, but the stark difference between art and graphic design is that I am careful to keep the artistic vision unwavering when it comes to outside influence. Even songwriting is not immune to the whims of what is expected and what is not.