The show was a great chance to learn. It forced me to finish unpainted borders, add hangers to art work, figure out how to hang the art work, and dial in the presentation of the display. It was awesome to have a chance to answer questions, make connections, get turned down, receive awesome feedback, package art on the fly and learn more about what it is that I create. People asked ,”So what do you do?” I had to think about this pretty hard and it took me a couple conversations before I started to see it myself. I thought I just painted but they wanted to know, what is my art about?  What is my theme? How is it different and what is unique about it? Which ones are my favorites and why? These are questions I hadn’t asked myself yet. But the more I talked and explained my process and visions, I was able to elaborate and explore more of what it is that I do.

I don’t specialize in specific categories like oil paintings of The Narragansett seashore 2 hours before the first spring rain… on canvas. I’d say that currently I paint landscapes, figures and wildland fire scenes using mostly complimentary colors. “Complimentary” is just the color theory term for the opposite color. When I was younger I was obsessed with drawing dragons, swords, castles,  the rugrats characters, and later I moved to hands, then to roses and it hasn’t stopped changing. I honestly hope that it never stays the same, I don’t know how long I would last painting the same seashore over and over. 

But besides enjoying painting landscapes, figures and wildland fire scenes, it was awesome to find a way to express my process, visions and style through these conversations. What we see as artists and how we present it will always be different. Some artists like to use a lot of short brush movements to give the piece a high energy feel or they may prefer to create realistic images. I tend to use long, smooth brush strokes to emphasise the shapes and forms. I have also been doing a lot with complimentary colors in my recent works to give contrast to the images. A great example is a piece titled Compliments (Compliments) uses a triad of complimentary colors. When I create something I want the work to make the viewer feel something instead of sending a message.

When I look at art, I am usually stopped by the piece that makes me say “dang”, gets me excited enough where I just make a grunt and point, or one that leaves me feeling sad knowing life won’t ever be the same knowing something so beautiful is out there. Kind of like Gimili in the Lord of the Rings when they left Lothorien and he would never see Galadriel again. I didn’t realize how much I needed the art goers’ help to figure this out just as much as they needed me to explain to them what it is I do. Self realizations are cool. I am making plans for future shows and in different locations.

So what’s new with PMtz Art?

I have been working hard updating the online gallery (Gallery). I have added descriptions, inspirations and information for each piece so it’s no longer just here is a picture and “you can tell by the way it is”. I have also created galleries for my collections. The collections are just my current themes but with fancy titles. They are: The Figure Collection, The Wildland Fire Collection and The Landscape Collection. I wanted to add a place where all the paintings of similar themes can be displayed together. It’s fun to browse through a collection and see the similarities, differences in techniques and approaches, the evolution of colors, and then to compare and see similarities of style between the other collections.