Inspiration

People often ask me about my inspiration. To be quite honest, the conceptual stage of my art is often more elimination than inspiration. The initial idea usually appears when my mind is sort of idling, like when I'm traveling or taking a shower. From there it's is primarily a matter of bringing the idea back to the essential. This means I'm usually throwing away 90%.

In general my work is much closer to reality than meets the eye. Most of my ideas come from ordinary things around me; landscapes, seeds, flowers, buildings and I take lots of reference photos. The images below illustrate the relationship between the initial concept and the finished painting. The first image shows a Pinus Radiata plantation close to were I live. You can see the influences in both Populus flucta and Sequoiadendron nemus.
The second one shows some berries of a Flax Lily I found while walking the dog. Most of the fruit fell off when I walked home, but enough was left for a sketchy picture. The last image illustrates the optical characteristics of solid crystal. Just click on the images to see the resulting art works.