Who I Was
Before I began to focus on children's portraiture, I was a freelance and staff equestrian illustrator (South Carolina Equestrian Magazine). After the children came along, I discovered what a fascinating subject children were. I have largely focused my creative energies there ever since. We moved from a very busy art market in 1997 to be near my parents in rural southwest Arkansas. Such a different world this is as far as art goes, but it gave me a chance to slow down and turn my attention to homeschooling the children; Arkanas is consistently in the bottom three states for ACT/SAT scores. Now my oldest son has graduated to college and my second one graduates this spring from our homeschool. I am once again finding time to turn my attention back to painting.
Who I am Right Now
With having such limited time for painting over the last five years, I am having to chip the rust off of skills a bit, restock some supplies, and assess where my skills are currently. My plan is to pick up my children's portraiture business again, so I am spending some time this spring to take a good look at how to work with my regional market conditions. It is also a time to explore new media and get some paintings in that I want to do before being pressed by a tight commission schedule. Oh, I hope to have that problem again.
Who I Want to Be
I plan on gradually building momentum over the spring and summer to reopen my portrait buisness in the fall. I join in the chorus of other voices here. I want to be the best portrait artist I can be. The access to other professional portrait artists is such a blessing. Even in the bigger art culture that I was in before the move to Arkansas, I never had the opportunities like I have now with the net, even if I do now live in a tiny rural town of only 365 people (and 1000 cows, 50 deer, 20 foxes, 30 skunks, and a million mosquitos and fire ants, hehehehe).
Some Samples:
Since I haven't been taking commissions for a few years, I guess I will share a few of the paintings that I did manage to fit in while homeschooling the children and one of my equestrian watercolors. The Arabian is a pretty tight crop because my digital file suffered a bit of curruption in the right side. I will have a reshoot with this painting in a month. But since this is a portrait forum, I am unlikely to get a second chance to share it.
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