How IT ALL STARTED

It was our second winter living in Montana. Summer and bicycling seemed like a lifetime away. I found myself scrolling Instagram envious of people riding bikes while the high for day was in the low teens. How did someone who didn’t care for winter end up here? Or, a better question is how would I survive it without spiraling into some Shining-esque madness?

At the time, I had committed to making the Youtube channel work. I was creating anywhere from 3 to 4 videos a week. I was a “content” making machine. While I loved making videos and expressing myself that way, by the time I reached the end of the week my eyes were tired and my wrists and fingers aching from the marathon editing sessions.

I’ve never had a good sense of life/work balance.

My antidote was to pick up a brush. I had loved drawing as child and my father is actually a well established plein air artist so a little of that rubbed off on me. I had a good “eye” so to speak, having worked as a photographer for several years. But, how would that translate to a new medium?

Well, I can tell you it was rough in the beginning. I could barely draw what was in front of me and it was infuriating. Art felt like a puzzle that I couldn’t solve even though the answer was sitting right in front of me. There was a big disconnect between what I wanted to create and what I was ACTUALLY creating.

Watercolor is an interesting medium. Some watercolorists paint with the precision of a brain surgeon. That is not my experience. For me, watercolor is a turbulent battle against entropy with the hopes of creating something beautiful in the aftermath. The paint bleeds and moves where it wants to, it mixes at the most inopportune time and it dries much lighter than you expect. It was simultaneously simple and complex, intentional and chaotic and just when you think you have a handle on it, it shows you something new.

I was hooked. I liked a good visual challenge. To the outsider it might appear as a calming hobby, but internally I was tilting with chaos.

Fast forward two more years and the paintings look a little closer to what I intended but there is still so much to learn. So many images to interpret in a different way. I get so easily distracted when riding a bike and stop to take reference photos for later. Thats the great thing about painting, the photos don’t need to be perfect, they don’t need to be high resolution. They just have to capture ENOUGH. Light and shadow, warm and cool and some basic composition. The rest, as a watercolor practitioner (I hesitate using the word “artist” and reserve that for others who know what they’re doing), is up to you.