1997 Art Lessons

Self Portrait, age 15

I had been drawing since age 3, but I had no fundamentals. I started taking art lessons with the extraordinary June Jermyn in 1997. She taught me form, composition, contrast, color, technique but most importantly: she taught me to see. The work I created during this time was not good, but it was necessary. The above self portrait is interesting because almost 20 years later... I haven't changed much.

I only have slides of the work from this time period, and they were a little scratched from countless moves. I did endless pencil renderings from photographs she took of ghost towns and factories.

I believe I gave the above drawing to my Mum, she hung it up in her cubicle at work and told me she received many compliments.

There's an Edward Hopper thing going on here, I like it. This one was my favorite of this series, I like the tone. I painted a lot of still life oil paintings during this time as well, but you don't want to see those.