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A few thoughts about painting

One of the true loves of my life is drawing and painting people. Usually I paint people who are involved in the every-day activities of life, things in which we all take part. My goal is to paint pictures people can easily identify with, things that looks like they are part of their world. To this end, I try to make the figures look as natural as I can with the action as candid as possible.

Occasionally people will ask me how I go about painting a picture and they are usually surprised at how much preliminary work is involved. Most of my paintings are the result of an evolutionary process. It is only after several idea sketches, a color sketch and a full-size pencil drawing that I am ready to begin the actual painting. There are other more direct methods of painting that I enjoy working with in other media. However, there is much more to painting than just method and technique.

Many early societies thought that an image of a subject had the power to capture its spirit. That is exactly what many artists, myself included, are trying to do. When we are able to capture the spirit of a subject within a painting, we have a picture that can speak to the soul of the viewer. And that's a lot to shoot for.

Paul Sullivan