George McPhee
The visual arts have always been important to me. In my high school years, the art room was my place of choice. Art was an interest that followed me to college, where it was one of my majors.
After age 30, I moved away from creating black and white (and often abstract) ink printing and graphite art, except for occasional doodling. Art appreciation grew by my visits to museums and galleries, and I began using video/filming as a creative outlet through uploading video blogs to YouTube. My primary focus in life moved far away from creating art to a career in social work, then public health, and then library work. And then...
My retirement from library work in early 2020 (just prior to the COVID-19 “horror movie”) provided me an opportunity to explore a new chapter in creating art again, with a meditative, playful, and colorful approach, after discovering professional lightfast colored pencil.(Colored pencil was not discussed when I was in art school). One of the unique features of colored pencil is the layering of colors.
I listen to the art, to hear what it wants me to do next. So for me the creative process involves spirituality… forms of meditation, play, a mix of music and silence, taking the time to NOT think. Of course there are also moments of thinking, analysis, observing, problem-solving, and color testing. But the meditation aspects seem critical.
Today I am focused on creating recognizable forms (realism), with particular interests in painting people, animals, and houses/buildings. I really like the older art movement called “Realism,” placing people in a natural setting, often doing an activity. I enjoy when the viewer knows the art has brushstrokes, to experience the medium and not a photograph. I like to stray from my reference photos a bit as needed, move a tree here or a branch there, or change the shadow color, or move the light source, to enhance the composition, while keeping the main subject recognizable and realistic. It looks like art, not a photograph. I have called this “loose photorealism.”
I usually call my colored pencil work paintings (rather than drawings), as the color is concentrated, and focused on large shapes and zones of color rather than line drawing. For me, drawing implies lines. Or if some areas are unfinished with paper showing, that also leads me to call that work a drawing. I prefer to have the colored pencil look less gritty and have a smoother painted look, mainly achieved by using odorless mineral spirits to blend one or two layers of the pigments more uniformly into the paper. I am venturing next into pastels (pastel pencil and pan pastel) as I increase the mediums I work with. I can do graphite drawings but prefer working with charcoal for my black and white images. Recently I have begun experimenting with pastel and am creating my first artworks in this new medium. Most of my techniques are self-taught with a high degree of experimenting, combined with observing other artists' techniques.