Radiance

I am very excited to announce that I am now a high school graduate of 2016!

It definitely wasn't easy but it's nice to finally know that after all these years my hard work paid off.
I also won the Art Department Award at this years awards ceremony!

I've never been the best at school because of my learning disabilities. I've always been a little slower than everyone else and it's always been a little harder for me to grasp certain concepts. Throughout middle school and even into high school I would always need a little extra help in some of the class. As a result of all these obstacles I always had to try harder than everyone else. So in way, my greatest weakness is ultimately my greatest strength because no matter what I'm doing I always have to try harder than everyone else.

Although, no matter what grade I was in, I always enjoyed being in my art class! Throughout middle school and most of high school I was definitely not the best artist in school by any means but it was what I was best at so really cherished it because it what the only thing that made me feel like I was good at something. However, throughout my entire school career everyone always recognized me as an artiest.
I always knew that art was what I loved doing and I knew that whatever career I went into one day would have to be art related so for a long time I kept searching for an art style that I thought I was good at and worked for me. I tried every art medium I could get my hands on like pencil, pastels, watercolor, chalk, wire, ect. Although I loved and enjoyed all of them, they just weren't what I was looking for and it wasn't until an art project I did at the end of my junior year of high school that I finally found what I was looking for.

I was getting ready to paint something a very large square sheet of thin wood that almost went up to my chest and I was trying to decide what to paint on it and I thought about the Starry Night painting by Vango because there was a large model of it it in the art room made up of small square canvases that had each been painted by different people from a previous art class in the past. I was thinking about how all the colors flowed together to make the painting and I really liked it so I thought I would try something like that. Long story short, I really liked the way that project turned out and it inspired me to explore painting which led to me finally discovering a style that worked for me. That discovery then led to my first real painting, Aqua, which then led to the beginning of new series of painting that I decided to start which I'm still continuing to this day! It's hard to believe that it's actually been a year since my great discovery and how much my style has has evolved with every painting.

It wasn't an easy journey to graduation but I am happy to say that I will be continuing my education in the fall and I hope that I will be able to college to learn to be an art teacher so that one day I can help open up other young artist to the world of art and creativity. Some of my success as an artist, that is how I have decided to define success, might have been the result of a good art teacher that I had in high school and I think that it is important for anyone no matter what career they want to go into and not just for artist to have someone in their lives who knows what they're doing and who has the experience to help guide the process and I think I would like to help bring some of that into other people's lives one day because I definitely remember times throughout my high school art classes where I wouldn't listen to directions because I thought I could do it on my own and I couldn't and then the art teacher would have to come along and help guide what I was doing into what it should be. So I'm thankful that I was able to have the art teacher that I had because I don't think I would be doing what I do now otherwise.

Although my journey is still short, from the experience that I do have I think the advice that I would give to other artist trying to find their own style or anyone aspiring to be an artist would be to keep practicing what their doing and most importantly keep trying new things because you never know where you're going to find the thing that just clicks and resonates with you. Let there be no boundaries to your creativity and explore everything you can. Also, when it comes to trying to find your own style it's not something you can force to happen either because sometimes it just happens. Sometimes you might even have a style and you won't even know it or recognize it. The most important thing of all is to do what you love and don't do something just because it makes someone else happy. Don't let anything stop you from doing what you love because that causes you form boundaries for yourself and it is important for the artistic mind to have no boundaries.

This is the first painting that I've finished during my first summer vacation as a high school graduate and, although there are still some other things that I still have to get into order so that I can go to college in the fall, I've decided to take this summer easy and once again continue to focus on my art and grow as an artist.

I call it, Radiance.

The idea for this painting was to try doing another painting similar to what I had done with Beautiful Fire using similar colors except this time I wanted to use more yellows and oranges to create more of a defined glowing effect because last time I didn't have the luxury of being able to blend the yellows with the reds and still have plenty of yellow left to work with because I was working with a lot less paint at the time. It's not as elaborate as some of my other paintings but it still wasn't any easier because all the real work actually went into trying to blend the colors together correctly and when I comes to a painting I don't call it finished unless I am absolutely happy with it. At first I just thought that I would do another painting where I just played around with the colors but I ended up redoing the main part that flows through the middle of the painting almost three times. I started the painting by just playing around with the colors but I quickly realized that I wasn't going to able to do that with this painting because the red ended up being so dominant and I wasn't achieving the glowing effect that I wanted so I had to use white to clear that part off and start over. Overall I really like this painting and I'm happy with the way it turned out and I think I does express the radiant glow that I was after.

Now let's do another one!

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Title: Radiance

Medium: Acrylic Paint

Year: 2016

Original Painting: For Sale