New Subjects I Would Like to Explore in my Work

08·10·2021

Today I want to talk about some subject matter I’m planning to explore that is different than what I’ve been up to since I started painting. This isn’t to say I want to start painting exclusively different things, but I’d like to practice some new work alongside what I’m doing now so that I can more effectively incorporate those elements into my current figurative/abstract work.

I’ve never had much of a pull to landscape work, as I’d never really been exposed to landscape art that wasn’t going for anything except photo-realistic, and well, I’ve got a camera for that, y’know? Since I love making surrealist work, I have a growing interest in using the realistic aspects of landscape to twist it around and make it something new.

On the other hand, I’ve always loved animals, but I’ve also always found them quite daunting to draw or paint. I haven’t done much proper anatomy practice when it comes to, well, any animals yet, so this would be quite the undertaking, but I’m intrigued by the possibilities. There’s so much that I can choose to focus on and study, so I’ll probably start slow and go from there.

Like I mentioned before, I’m mostly interested in learning realism because I think once I have the ability to paint realistically, I can include realism in my abstracted paintings and mess around with merging the two, if that makes sense. For example, it would be cool to make landscapes that are part photorealistic, part textured and abstract, or realistic animals that morph and blend into abstract forms. I’m excited to experiment and see where it takes me!