The Life we Paint
The Life we Paint is a newsletter idea I had about sharing art, stories and ideas. Sharing our lives.
The concept is simple, you submit a photo and some text about it or about yourself and I make a painting of it. Each week I share the newest painting with everyone and talk a little about the painting, the process, my thoughts on it. My goal was to challenge myself to work outside of my comfort zone and by painting random pictures I’m being forced to work on subjects that are very different from my normal work.
Sometimes I work direct from the photo, sometimes I riff off the text the person sent, sometimes I find myself frustrated and making a mess, but it always results in an interesting journey for me. The other thing is I try to limit how long I work on these, this is meant to be a fun side project, I still have commission work I have to take care of during the week so the time limit is a big challenge and one that I think is really good for me.
I tend to work and live in the details, small writing, small brush strokes so working with a time limit has forced me to loosen up a bit and work with larger brushes and embrace messes and imperfections. I feel like all these lessons can carry over into my normal work helping me improve how I see things, how I paint or draw and figure out what is absolutely necessary in order to get a message across versus what isn’t all that critical to the image.
I also tend to favor certain palettes so getting random photos makes me work in colors that I normally don’t work in expanding my thinking and how I use color overall. I’ve also been getting more interested in the narrative quality of art and telling stories through it so I’ve been trying to find ways to get some story telling into these projects. It doesn’t always work but the goal is there!
If you’d like to participate in this project please sign up for my newsletter.
I’ll make you a painting and send you a free high quality photo of the painting that you can have printed. Its the same way I photograph all my own art for print, I do color corrections in lightroom so it will translate well to print. If you love the original and want to purchase it I’ve been asking for $200 for the time and materials I invest in each painting. If you don’t want to buy it there is no obligation and there is no limit on submissions. I just want to have fun making art for people, making your lives a little brighter and more beautiful and learning about you guys along the way.
If you think someone else might enjoy participating in the project please send them my way! I want to paint for as many people as I can!
