My go-to medium is acrylic paint on canvas or wood. Once in a while on paper or other painting surfaces. But acrylic paint. It dries quickly, it’s bright, it’s rather forgiving, it’s non toxic, and it just works for me. A lot of people don’t like painting in acrylic because they say it dries too quickly, as opposed to oils where you have a long work time with it, but even with acrylic paint, I keep a fan by my easel and I’m often using a blow dryer or fan to make that acrylic paint dry faster. Because I paint very fast, and I want that paint to dry much quicker than it wants to.

Q: I want to know first how many talents you have.

A: How many talents I have? Well, I have only one talent, and that is communication. So it doesn’t really matter what medium I’m using. Whether I’m writing, or painting, or acting… Speaking in public. It all is communication. And I’m a nurse. Nursing is really so much about communication. It’s listening and responding. And that is what art is. My paintings are a story, whether that story is apparent when you look at it or not. Sometimes I’m not even aware of what the story is until afterwards when I’m interpreting it, or even just figuring it out for myself.

Last month, I went to a sale at an old school in Red Ridge, Michigan, and picked up this antique box. I love imagining the history of it, being a hand made box, and wonder what it was made to hold. It has a removable tray in the top. There was a larger one available that day, but I didn’t have room in my car to bring it home.

I’ve been thinking about not painting fish in trees anymore, but it is a theme that I love to play with, so I probably won’t quit for a while.

Also seen at NorthShore ArtScene. Thanks Joan!

Tim,

I wanted you to know we are so thrilled with your beautiful paintings. We will treasure them always. Don’t the Salmon look like they were meant for our DR wall? A dream come true.

Thank you for sharing your gifts with us.

Susan

When most people talk about fishing around these parts, they mean removing fish from a lake. For me, it means adding fish to a painting. How many new fish do you see? I think I count 9.

24 x 48″ Acrylic on canvas

Our mind plays tricks on us. It sees this paint stroke as the trunk of a tree, this blue patch as sky. I like to see the paint as paint within the intended forest. Sometimes I paint colors only to see an image in it later on. I recently heard someone say that the purpose of a painting is to entertain, and I hope mine do that. I derive so much pleasure from the act of painting, and hopefully this will translate to the eye of the viewer. These images contain stories in my head, and I wish I could share them all. But I have to let them speak for themselves.

I’ve finished the final project for my class through California College Of The Arts!

It’s an 8 page comic.

My favorite holidays are

1) My birthday. Not only is it my own personal holiday, but it falls in the heart of summer when I can ride my bike, have a bonfire and just be out in my yard.

2) National Space Exploration Day. It wasn’t a holiday until my 9th birthday when Neil Armstrong walked on the surface of the moon.

3) Lake Superior Day, when my birthday falls on a Sunday.

My grandfather was a painter and art teacher. I’m sad I didn’t know him better or have him around longer. He was an eccentric man. I have few memories of him, but I do have one of his paintings, and the book he taught from. The book is all marked up with his insights and underlining, and there are a few of his notes tucked between the pages, along with a flier for one of his classes. I read that book with his annotations, and I feel like he is speaking to me.

My father is also an eccentric man, and the older I get, the more I realize I am a lot like him. And I’m happy about that. For a brief time, my father painted. He created tiny abstracts on wood blocks, and I have those in a box. I treasure them. He shrugs them off as though they are nothing, but I once heard him talking about them with his grandchildren, and it might as well have been an inspiring gallery talk. A fireside chat.

Then there’s me. I think people would say I’m a bit eccentric myself. I don’t know about that. I’m currently studying comics through the California College of the Arts, having studied art and painted throughout my life.I recently realized that my paintings are comics, and that we are surrounded by comics all the time, and I hadn’t recognized them.