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| “Dots,” acrylic on cradled panel in a handcrafted floater frame, 6″ x 12″. SOLD |
for the viewer. While a mysterious landscape or exceptional portrait can
momentarily move me, I am most frequently drawn to the paintings that
make me smile, laugh or reminisce about a pleasant memory, which is why I
paint what I paint – toys, candy, bright colors and quirky trompe
l’oeil. For this, I owe a great deal of inspiration to my time as a
caricature artist at Walt Disney World.
When I first began painting in college, I had no idea what to paint –
and I was a pretty terrible artist then, too! I painted the usual
painting exercises – vases, plastic skulls, copies of master works, but I
didn’t have any vision, and so I gradually lost interest in my work.
Not long after graduating, a very gracious lady decided to give me an
opportunity to work as a caricature artist at Animal Kingdom, one of the
four Walt Disney World theme parks. She did this, despite the fact that
I had no colorful or funny works in my portfolio – just dark, brooding,
20-something tortured artist works. This was, I suppose, a moment that
changed my whole outlook on making art.
All day, I’d shout and point to the children and families walking by –
as I was trained to do – “You’d make a great cartoon! YOU’D make a great
cartoon.” Doing dozens and dozens of drawings of people every day,
making them look cute or funny, my goal was always to make the person
sitting and their families laugh at just how adorable they were. It fed
my creativity and enthusiasm, and I wanted to get better and better, and
make better work, get more creative, and produce things faster.
While I had a long hiatus from making art not long after that job until
just a couple of years ago, I often think back on how much I learned
there about making fun art that makes people smile. Life can be a bit
too serious sometimes, so if I can make art that momentarily removes
viewers from our super-serious world and feel what it’s like to be an
imaginative kid again, full of wonder and fun and color, then I’m a
happy camper.
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