“Ars longa, vita brevis.” or “Art is long, life is short.” (… and getting shorter.)
Welcome to my art website, which represents a cataloging of my work in a number of media, both real and digital (is there a difference?). The works are presented as slideshows which display each image for five seconds, then move to the next one. However, you can move through quicker by left-clicking on the image to go to the next.
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to pause an image. Also, I have disabled a visitor’s ability to download images from this website.
Big News – Website Updated (April 2015)
Yes, I actually got busy and performed a long-overdue update to this website, primarily to the computer-based art section. Look see: Computer Graphics – Hands – Words at Play
Website Organization
The works in this site are organized by media type (e.g., Paintings, Prints, etc.) and/or by subject (especially Exhibits & Themes). I hope this is not too confusing. About the website name? It’s in honor of my three children, Kathleen, Patrick and Jennifer. While Jennifer is in fact the middle child, I put part of her name last to create a word easier to pronounce. But she did get three letters, versus only two for my other children. Sometimes the middle child does win out.
Artist’s Statement
I am primarily a figurative artist, and I often work in series and themes. One of my favorite series is to delve into the past, both of my own family history and other topics which interest me. You may also spot word-play in some of my works.
I frequently work from photos, and as sources I have a rich trove of family pictures plus the many photos which can be downloaded from the Internet. Photos are necessary because I often portray people who are far distant in miles or years. But my goal is to provide a different interpretation, not just to reproduce, so I usually shift the painting’s elements around and introduce new ones from multiple sources. Thus, most of my paintings contain representational elements, but may easily stray from reality.
I have tried many media, but have settled into acrylics for painting, plus charcoal and pencil for preliminary drawings – to work out composition and to get the idea of the painting into my head. Before starting a painting, I usually think about it for a while, but then let the painting itself take me where it will once I begin.
While I painted off and on during my career in business, my painting began in earnest when I retired in 1997. Since my paintings are usually representational, it should not be surprising that I also use graphics software to create computer-based art, compositing images from multiple sources. I find that my painting and my computer art help each other, both in composition and color-mixing.
“Everyone has talent at 25. The difficulty is to have it at 50.” Edgar Degas.
(“… and even more difficult at 75+!” Patrick Flannery)
Biography
My interest in art began in grade school, when for six years I attended the Tam-0-Shanter Saturday morning art classes at Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, followed by the high-school art classes at Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon) for three more years.
But I put that interest aside, getting a bachelors and masters in business at Carnegie Tech, until the early 1980s when I returned to painting as a part-time diversion from the stresses of my job. I lived in Pittsburgh, and was able to attend classes at both the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, and at Touchstone Center in Uniontown.
When I retired in 1997 I was able to devote considerably more time to studying drawing, painting and print-making at DBCC (now DSC) and at the Art League of Daytona Beach.
In the mid 2000s, I also attended graphic arts classes at DBCC, becoming proficient enough in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator to create computer-based art, as illustrated by my photomontages and computer graphics.