| Painting is, for me, a way of communicating, of expressing to others my feelings about the world around us. When I retired early, in 2002, I found that I had suddenly lost many of the opportunities for communicating that had come with my work. Painting has filled that need since then, and I think it could do so for many retirees. People often think that to paint one must have unusual, inborn talent, or to go through a long period of training in art school. I found that is not really true painting, like talking is a natural human activity. I had no special training as a young person, only after retiring, I attended painting classes. This taught me the fundamentals of design and of the technical aspects—handling paints and paper. Since then it has been a matter of practice, and looking as much as possible at high quality paintings by others. (!) Original size of slideshow is 480-by-320 pixels. More: slide4you.com/art/620 |