Sometimes an image simply comes into mind, and it only clouds the birth of new ideas until the day I can get it out of my head. This idea was definitely one of those clouds.

It started in 2016 on a drive through Colorado where Olga and I saw these sweet little creeks that were winding through large areas of flat land. Why do they do what they do? It made me want to put a canoe in them to see where they would go and how far I could explore them.

Feelings of comfort and discovery like this always stick in my mind and eventually make their way into my work.

Lighthouses also seem to bring me a sense of comfort. They represent guidance, safety and peace of mind. They have appeared in my work as far back as I can remember and will continue to do so until my days are done.

The concept was born…

In this particular piece, three lighthouses stand tall with a single flame lighting their lantern rooms, offering up more than enough guidance to the traveling paper boats.

A part of me believes that too much guidance can lead to a reliance on the guide and a laziness toward personal growth, which brings me to the point of this piece. Getting too close to the flame in the lighthouses represents a danger to the paper boats affecting our path and vision of what we truly want from our own lives.

Constructing the scenery…

An obsession of mine is making sure the quality of my work is at its highest level possible by using the resources currently available to me. To aid in the best result possible, I require props. Sometimes my subject matter appears to me in my travels, but when it doesn't, I need to create it.

Perspective is sometimes very difficult to make up, so I fill that gap with models as you can see here: From the bends in the creek, the folds in the paper boats to the perspective in the light houses. This amount of information arms me with everything I need to bring my ideas to life.

I am constantly taking courses in design, advanced perspective and various other techniques, so my hope is that one day the need to use props will disappear. Until then I will enjoy doing it this way as it brings me a lot of joy.

Mistakes were made…

As you will see throughout the process below, there were many wrong turns and errors in judgment that I made. If I had hair, most of it would have been on the floor by the end of this piece!

It started out swimmingly…. I liked the idea that the lighthouses were made of paper as I was going to put a flame inside of them to add tension. To paint the lighthouses believable enough to look like paper to the point where it was clear in my viewers’ mind was tough, if not a completely bad decision. They were just starting to look like badly painted lighthouses.

My assumption was that even if I painted a perfect paper lighthouse, my viewers would not register to the fact that it was paper…. So I axed them!

(The image below is what they originally looked like)

The long and flat horizon wasn’t working for me either and the more and more I looked at the piece, I felt I had cheated myself out of what could be an intricate detailed vision rather than a quick lifeless execution.

I started wishing I had more hair to rip out at this point. It was time for drastic change before I buried myself in a deeply seeded wrong turn.

I spent hours searching through my piles of reference images and found a range of images from Peggy’s Cove Lighthouse.

The background was driving me insane as well as it simply didn’t have the depth of adventure that I wanted it to have. So I looked into our recent trip to Utah and found the perfect rocky backdrop for the piece.

This photo, like many backdrops I use, was taken from the window of our moving car by Olga while we were flying down a highway at 110K an hour.

Time for radical changes…

So now it was time to go about restructuring this piece. You can see the pencil marks in this image showing you what is about to be added.

You’ll also notice a large pile of rock in the foreground that was the partial accumulation of 25 hours of research, design and painting.

Below you’ll notice that the 25 hours of research, design and painting has been erased and there is 8 inches of canvas missing from the bottom of the piece.

Yes…. I tore it off in frustration, re-stretched the canvas on another frame and went back to the drawing board for the piece.

As much as it was a really frustrating process that led up to the decision, the tearing of canvas was music to my ears!!

So…. the home stretch now. Find a new foreground, paint the lighthouses and I feel the composition has finally found a comfortable place.

So now that the piece has been finalized and about 100 hours over my intended time frame, I am content. The detail is something that is addictive and it can go on forever. There really is no limit to how far a painting can be taken.

A quote I once heard and have parroted many times is, “An artwork is never finished… It is only stopped at an interesting point.” It is possible to breeze past the right finishing point multiple times in an artwork. To see the finishing point becomes one of the many skills that it takes to be a better artist.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this and I really do appreciate it that you made it this far. Taking an interest in my work is the quickest way to my heart.

Final thought…

So…. If you are still here, I want to thank you and share something personal with you that I found out about myself during this piece.

I am not what I would consider a natural artist! It took me many years to realize that I have to work far harder than most artists do to get the result I have so far in my career. I watch artists around me who exude natural talent and pick things up so quickly, while rushing to success and then hitting a plateau. I am always steadily grinding away in the background moving ever so slowly toward my goal while soaking in as much knowledge as I can.

Life drawing, perspective and colour sensitivities are the things that really take time for me to grip onto properly.

The one thing that takes it to the next level for me is my determination and stubbornness to see the image I have in my head arrive in front of me. It is seeing the vision and the finished piece that drives me every day to be the best artist that I can be. I work so incredibly hard to learn and gain the skills I need to produce the best work possible, and this will be my mission until I die at a ripe old age.

The tortoise and the hare. Slow and steady wins the race!

Thank you for reading.

The Promethean Paradox