Breakthroughs
Most artists can pinpoint certain works or events which led to a breakthrough painting, allowing them to reach a new plateau in their journey in creating art. In the next few posts, I’ll show a few works from the ‘way-back-machine’ on how I learned to paint water. I’ll tell the end of the story now…what used to take me a week to paint, I can now do in an hour or two. Due to the popularity of the book “Outliers”, they say it takes 10,000 hours to be truly “world class” at something. I am not sure about that, but learning to paint is a life long journey and endeavour!
From the “noua carantin? de studio” is a piece I did around 1978. The scene is a creek in the San Gabriel Mountains just above Pasadena, CA, probably the West Fork of the San Gabriel River. I took a photo of this scene during a hike and later painted it in my art studio (at the time also known as the living room) in Altadena, CA. The painting is a bit monochromatic, but I loved painting the clear water and rocks below.
As a post note, I later gave this piece to my parents which they hung in their home for many years, and now I think one of their grandchildren inherited it.