The first sketch for "Butterfly Garden" was made in 1994.The
second was made in 1995. I did not make a painting of this subject until
a few years later. The first sketch of any subject is usually done in
what I call " a one minute sketch". Sometimes it actually
takes more than one minute, but the idea is to be concerned primarily
with the composition, the arrangement of the objects in the picture.
Then in later sketches, the subjects and the details may be developed.
It is often the most difficult hurdle for new artists to get over, to
make a quick sketch and not spend time with detail. It is also a dead
end for seasoned artists who often get stuck in a rut with "what
works", afraid to journy past their self imposed limitations.
Every sketch and every painting I have ever made, is a study for the
next picture in that series. It is this continuity of the process that
produces great works of art. This design method allows the artist to
add one intelligent thought upon another , thus the artifact slowly
grows into a work of art that could not be thought of all at once. This
process is called “stylization”.
It is a big word, but it means that the artist has developed their own
unique style of art. It does not fit comfortably into the lexicon of
words that art historians limit themselves to. There is no word to describe
a true stylist as that body of work has never existed before on the
planet.
There are very few artists that truly develop in this manner. The three
artists that are true "stylists", that have influenced me
toward this direction are, Wayne Taylor, my design professor at North
Carolina State University, School of Design, the American painter Stuart
Davis and the French painter Fernand Leger.
My work does not look exactly like their work, and I do not attempt
to use their subjects or painting technique, rather it is the idea of
their basic method that I have learned. It is their process of continuity,
one sketch leading to a painting, that painting leading to another series
of sketches, on and on, faithfully over a lifetime until the artist
paints their last painting. It is this discipline that brings a unique
result that later, only after many artist copy the style, do the art
historians place a name on it and then it becomes one of the familiar
"isms" in the vocabulary of art.
For those artists
who journy off in this manner, it is a lonely road, but the true artist
has no other choice.
