Ask anyone why they paint and you will get as many different answers as there are painters!
For me, there is a correlation between writing a novel (see my Author page) and laying down a picture on a convenient surface. Both streams of creativity present an opportunity to take an extract out of reality and tinker and play with it until the overall effect is more pleasing, interesting and exciting than the truth.
I think that ‘tinkering and playing’ is what Art is all about; the application of words in the novel or the selected medium in painting; the bridge between the writer/artist’s thoughts and the end hard-copy is what gives me the buzz.
I am not aiming to reproduce a perfect image of a scene or subject from reality onto a board, canvas or paper. On completion, if it was good, it might be labelled ‘photographic’, and although it would take more time and skill than I possess to achieve, the process would have robbed me of the playing and tinkering that would have made it ‘my own’.
I have been painting with oils, acrylic and occasionally watercolour since 2012 – something I have been wanting to do for long time but could never quite make the space for it. What nonsense!
I now know that you don’t have to have a well-lit and well-kitted out studio – you will need some knowledge, but above all it’s the strong desire to paint or draw things your way. So all my posturing and procrastination about not having the space/equipment merely served to delay the inevitable!