I have loved art for as long as I can remember and in my mid twenties had an annual ritual that included photography, painting and writing. During the first half of the year I would be painting-actually from fall into winter and as soon as spring came I would be doing photography. It wasn’t something I planned, it was just how I envisioned creatively and it just happened that spring seemed to inspire me to photograph and fall and winter seemed to be for painting.
For the longest time this is how it went until one year I sold a photograph and lost my artistic soul for photography-afterwards instead of reacting to the inspiration I asked myself if it was salable. I believe this is a problem-you need to react like an artist and capture the initial impression and only after find a place to market the image, never the other way around. I took a break from shooting photography.
Besides losing the eye for photography I also had just learned much about what I was doing right and what I was doing wrong with my painting after meeting with several gallery owners, again I would question myself about the painting instead of it flowing. This was actually a very good plateau for my artistic learning-after several years of fighting myself the painting techniques again became second nature and I would be able to paint and be creative without questioning the process.
Another important aspect of that period of time was that I was getting married. After a five year engagement, we were finally getting married and the honeymoon would take me to a place where I would be inspired and that inspiration would be the impetus for years of painting and writing.
I was in the White Mountains and walked the mile long trail to the cascades. The cascades is a collection of waterfalls that climb straight up. As you walk up one waterfall, another one makes itself known, I was enthralled with the water, the sound, the color. I believe there were five or six total and each of them was very different. We walked to the top of the falls and were able to get shots of each. This became the impetus of the next group of paintings and lots of writing.
On returning to normal life another creative outlet became available-I would build waterfalls in fish tanks, the creativity and the manic excitement was the same as painting. I had multiple waterfalls at the same time and each time I finished one, I had an idea for the next one. In the process, I learned the way water moves and how it can divert it’s path with a rock in the wrong position. I fell in love with the sound of water falling and I would paint and create free standing waterfalls-this passion lasted for probably five or six years and my son and I enjoyed many evenings watching tree frogs and salamanders in the tanks that I built-it was a very cool hobby.
Now I am back to photography, although still not quite to the extreme as I was originally. I still have the passion for painting and photographing water and that trip to the cascades is what started the inspiration. One of these days I plan on doing free standing, welded waterfalls that stand on their own outside of a tank but that will come some other day when time and money allow.