RestARTing

Is an age of 53 too old to start painting?

Hopefully not or I’ve been wasting my time trying.

It’s not exactly STARTING to paint – more like restarting. I tried before many years ago, got discouraged and thought what’s the point?

As a child I loved drawing and spent hours copying Disney characters from books and comics. I also tried to draw pictures of things that interested me, mostly copied from photos in books or magazines.

I recall giving both of my Grandmothers a calendar illustrated with my drawings. I’m not sure which one was most appreciated. The one with the scene from Lady and the Tramp or the one depicting a Lancaster Bomber conducting the Dambuster’s raid over Germany.

That is the last memory I have of my childhood artistic attempts. Over the years I occasionally applied pencil to paper but didn’t stick with it.

So why the recent interest?

A series of things came together to encourage me to try again. These mostly involved a friend from New Zealand who has been painting “bible words” for many years. He sent me one of his paintings and then introduced me to the art of Colin McCahon.

During a visit to the National Gallery Australia in Canberra I came across McCahon’s painting “Victory Over Death 2” – which affected me like no other painting I’ve seen. Since that first viewing I’ve even made a special trip to the gallery just to see that one painting. (http://www.mccahon.co.nz/cm001502)

Somewhere in all of these events and experiences I was inspired to do my own “bible words” painting. So far my attempts have all been valuable learning experiences as I come to terms with the use of paint. I’ve mainly painted bible “texts” but I have also started my first non-text work, depicting Moses and the burning Bush. That painting is going very slowly as I try to get things right, but I’m very happy with the way it is developing.