My Love for Painting

I have always loved to draw ever since I was a little kid. It started with drawing cars, trucks, people and then patterns I would see in objects such as wood or in the clouds. My love for drawing and painting grew as I entered school and at around 7 or 8 years of age, I realized that drawing was something I enjoyed. At this time I won a number of competitions for various things such as an ad campaign for M.A.D.D. in the mid 1980's.

I was always encouraged by my cousin Dian, my brother who would challenge me, and the graciousness of my dad who would hang my brother's and my drawings in his office for others to see. My love for drawing turned into painting, first with Acrylic, then on to Oil. This was in Jr. High where I learned perspective, tones, shading, and of course the color wheel! I even learned how to stretch my own canvas', apply gesso and so on. I didn't appreciate these things at the time, but looking back, it is something I will always cherish. Unfortunately after graduating High School the love I had for painting soon started to be overtaken by "real life" and I had to focus on College. I didn't stop painting, I just didn't have the same time. I must also mention that I was very serious about playing my guitar and that consumed me for 15 years of my life for 3-4 hours a day. I would also paint smaller scale oil/acrylic paintings for friends & family in the late 1990's. In 2001, I met my beautiful wife and of course I painting some landscapes for her, not that I thought that would win her heart! Fast forward to 2003, my dad bought me a Watercolor set as a gift. I never did touch watercolors, other than the one's we all painted with as kids. It was an instructive set from Readers Digest with Technical & Project books to follow. I dove into it head first and my first painting of Ta' Kola Windmill from the island of Gozo turned out pretty good, if I may say so myself. As a token of gratitude for the watercolor set, I gave this to my dad as a Fathers Day gift in 2004. I found that Watercolor was a style of thinking ahead and planning before leaping in like you can with Oil and Acrylic. With the latter, you can correct mistakes by scraping off or painting over, but not with Watercolor. To be honest, what I love about Watercolor is that you see results right away and the clean-up doesn't take long at all. With Oil and Acrylic, the progression is a little bit slower, but I am slowly getting back into painting with Acrylic and Oil.

As for my paintings, I haven't had any formal training other than my days in Jr. & Sr. High School. I look forward to one day taking some classes to improve my God given talents in Oil, Acrylic and Watercolor. I must also mention that I live in a region of the Mediterranean that has a lot of top notch artists to learn from. You can literally start talking about art with someone and most of the time they know some guy who works in the Dock Yards, lives down the street or is the average "Joe" who is a master painter, and most of the time it is true. I am sure that I will gain more confidence in my skills once I take some sort of class, but until I find the time, I will continue to paint. Since the end of 2008, I have started to sell my Watercolor paintings in a boutique in the States. Some of these are shown in my slideshow presentation. It is just the beginning of a journey that I hope will grow into a lifelong venture.