Landscape of Virginia

There is a historical side to me. I like revisiting the past of my family as I'm sure most people do other wise Kodak wouldn't have been so popular in the past selling memories to family upon family. Now with digital photography the past can be seen closer to the present than ever before. But I digress, the past of my childhood has recently come to my attention with regards to some photographs I rescued from my mother throwing them away. They are photos that my Dad took and with the help of a friend I was able to digitalised them and print them on a few CD's for safe keeping. I am currently working on paintings that deal with using those same photos as reference points for artwork of my own. My Dad as it was noted was really good a composing a photograph from life events. I'd like to think some of that trait got passed down to me. In art school a professor and artist said he liked my composition a lot in an early painting of my cartoon style at the Academy...

An old long enduring year comes to a close and new possibilities open up with the start of a New Year starting tonight. It's all looking like a good one to come. I have some good ideas for coming paintings, I think I got a good lead on subject matter for my work. I am planning to do a number of paintings focusing on my father's Japanese photographs that he took while we lived in Kamahura and I was but a new guy on the block. I have done four so far and I am happy with the results. I'm hoping to get a good number of them together and then put on a show of them as a group with copies of the original photos just beside them with a short description of what's going on within the photo or what I might remember of the time when it was taken. While painting I could sometimes remember what the weather was like that day or what it sounded like when that photo was taken. All the memories were gone until I began studying them when I was painting, then some "flashback...