masks Print

As a child I was often spending my spare time drawing and I became known, apparently, as the best in class for drawing at school and had a "gift". I was greatly into Sci-Fi back then and loved the comic book illustrations of the time (1970s - 80s) and would copy these. This was a great time. I had little other obligations so could just do it and the validation from friends helped a lot. This graduated into fantasy art and especially the fantastic paintings of Boris Vallejo. All this was great inspiration, though I didn't do any of my own, original stuff. Having gotten a little bored with doing pencil drawings of everything I finally jumped into doing my first oil painting when I was 16.I was also astounded by air brush poster art of the 80's; chrome robots, etc, and tried my own.Very enjoyable times! Besides art I became a skilled in engineering. In my art I was always looking for inspiration. It was a learning process and despite learning more skills and the pitfalls the main thing I learnt was that I spent too much time comparing myself to others or trying to be like them. This is really a big no-no for an artist. An artist is a creative being, not a duplicating machine! Then in 2010 my wife sadly passed away and I soon made a firm decision that no matter what else life gave me or I had to do I will always be an artist. So, I got back to it, learnt more and practiced and more and more decided to be myself and get my own style, trying different genres. My passion in it always has been to use vivid colour or vivid scenes that thoroughly exercise the imagination and make the picture stand out, even if its a painting of a flower I like to add that extra something. I enjoy painting in more vivid colors, working in oils and acrylics and trying ways of mixing substances to create effects within the media. My aim is to produce art that, even just for a moment, makes one drop everything and just be enthralled with what they see in front of them. A motto I have is "dont think, just create". I am influenced by the elegance of the human form as well as beauty in nature and the physical world and the imagination one can use in re-forming them and combining them. Yes, I want to make money from my art but not just for the sake of money. I would like to support humanitarian endeavours such as Say No to Drugs and United for Human Rights.