I guess I'd better explain a little about where the "Night Owl" thing comes from. My good friend Piper gave me that nickname because I do work a 12 hour night shift and do things at odd hours for most people. The name has stuck and I think it adds a little air of sophistication and "owlish wisdom" to these pages. Plus it fits a person that goes to bed with the sunrise and "hunts" at night!

For me the pursuit of art is a process that never comes to an end. If at some point I come to the realization there is nothing in a painting I would do differently then the quest is over and it is time to move on. There is no such thing as a "perfect" painting, but the little imperfections make the work more interesting to the viewer. As long as the major elements are in perspective then the rest is artist's license anyway.

I think that music plays an important role in creativity. I was fortunate to grow up in a family that not only played music, but listened to a wide variety of styles. My different moods respond to different music and my different paintings are in some ways the result of the music I listened to at the time I created it. A painting done while listening to Classical will be totally different than the same subject if Heavy Metal is playing. Although it is not a necessity I find having music playing while I create to be a benefit.

Many people ask me "How do You paint?". That is one of my most feared questions because my genuinely truthful answer has to be "I don't know!". Although I can tell you the mechanics behind it which is as simple as putting some color on a palette, mixing it to form the color I want, and slapping it on the canvas. But for how I do certain things or what colors to use for what mixture, that is a personal thing that I cannot fully express in words. It just comes naturally I guess.

Starting is the hardest part of any painting and a lot of artists use certain "gimmicks" to get started. The majority of my oil paintings start out with a ground of grey Gesso applied over the primer of the canvas surface. I find it easier to start when there is not a large expanse of stark white staring me in the face. I do not do a detailed sketch for the oil paintings but prefer to lay out the major elements in "stick" fashion and go from there.

The canvas is very important in oil painting. It will tell you what it will accept and what it won't. I have experienced some problems painting in the past when I did not listen to the canvas and tried to do something it would not support. Like the woodcarver that sees the finished carving in the wood and strives to chip off everything that is not part of what is there, that is the way of the canvas too.

There are a lot of challenges in life that we must meet head-on. If everything was easy then life would be so boring that most of us could not stand it. Life's little challenges is its way of saying, "Do your best!". So we all do our best and hope that someday someone will recognize the quality in our work.

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