I think that it's time and it's best that you, the viewer and potential buyer of my art, know who I am as an artist and as a person.

I've been painting for the longest time...like a really long time. You might say that I'm an old soul when it comes to creating art and painting pictures. It's probably "in my blood". And I love it.

In my youth I had aspirations of being a very great, and very well-known and sought-after artist. A Cezanne of our time! Dreams of people flocking to my gallery to watch me dash off my next masterpiece floated through my mind. And the paparazzi would hover around me, breathlessly awaiting my next words of wisdom to print in their magazines. A movie star for the art world!

Then that set of aspirations was eclipsed by more "practical" goals, like paying the rent and raising a family. I forgot about the paparazzi, closed the studio and got on with daily survival. My paintings were relegated to the closet, my paints dried in their tubes and paint brushes decayed with age. Funny how your life evolves as the decades come and go. But now the family is raised, the bills are well in hand and I'm painting again with a new fury like never before seen in my younger days. So although much time has passed and I'm no longer that photogenic, I can still paint at a professional level and I can paint quickly and competently.

I believe it was in the 1500's that there was an Italian artist named Tintoretto. He was known as "the furious one" because he could paint a masterful work of art so quickly that it boggled the imagination. That's me. In the past two years, I've painted roughly 150 finished oil paintings. Most of them are pretty good too. My fellow artists and friends all said to me that it was time to "get rid of some of them" aka sell them, since I was just amassing them in my home, enjoying my creations but without any thought to promoting and marketing my work. What got me to realize that they were right was when my fellow artists began purchasing my paintings before they had even dried! Ok, so who am I and what am I communicating as an artist? Am I that pretentious "movie star'? Let me put it this way: Where some artists spend years going through their "phases" (i.e. "the early years", "the blue phase", "the inner angst and struggle phase", etc.), I've found my voice. I have my style. I know what I like to paint and what I'm good at. There are no pretenses, no garbled and meaningless descriptions of "evoking muses" and the like. There are no hidden or subliminal meanings to my work that only a few initiates know. 

My art is real. It's expressive, bold and colorful and dramatic and sometimes, whimsical. And technically the work is very professionally rendered. But the work depicts real life and real things and is relatable to anyone and everyone.

The great Norman Rockwell used to take a newly finished work of art and run down to the corner shoemaker or the grocer and ask them to critique his work. If they liked it then Rockwell would exhibit it. If they didn't like it or understand it then Rockwell threw it in the trash. In other words, great art should be relatable to everyone. That's where I come in. :)

Perhaps that's not the "trend" in today's art world but I doubt that really carries much weight with the public and with real, practical people. Consider the work of Carol Marine, Michael Chamberlain, Duane Kaiser or Sarah Sedwick. Or the great David Leffell, or Greg Kreutz. These are all modern-day artists (in other words, they're all still alive) and many of them great masters. All of them paint realistically, some in the style of the Old Masters, and all of them are successful. 

So now, given that, new aspirations have emerged...not necessarily to be the "great" artist, but to definitely be an artist that is well-known and sought-after. To be an artist that people can relate to. And to be an artist that can make an honest living selling my work to people who like what I do. That's not too much to ask, is it? So yes, maybe I do still want to be an art "movie star". Who wouldn't want that? But if not, that's ok too. I'm still painting what I love.