The last ten years has been a time of great change and growth for me. A decade ago, I was in a very different place both professionally and artistically. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I found myself in a dead end job and my skill as an artist had diminished to a shocking degree. This, as you may well guess, horrified me. What once had come so easily to me was now something I struggled to do. That was something that I could never accept. I could never allow years, decades really, of effort to dissipate before my eyes. I was taught to never give up and therefore have a complete inability to give in when it comes to my goals.
That’s why my wife and I decided that I should leave my dull and lifeless county job and focus on creating work and improving my skill full time. I knew that I would have been able to do this at some point and had been working towards it as a goal from the moment I had been forced to leave the path I was meant to be on, but being able to do it at that time has allowed me to use the past ten years to both hone my skill as an artist and to create work that has risen to a level of excellence of which I am proud.
The following twelve pieces of work represent my evolution as an artist over those ten years. They are a testament to my unshakable persistence and determination as well as examples of my total unwillingness to accept anything but the best for myself.
Auguste Rodin. 2012. Five years prior to this drawing, my brush rendering skill was such a complete disaster that I was unable to complete any work using this technique; it had been many years since I had last worked with a brush prior to that. After five years of daily and focused work, this drawing not only showed me that I was on the right track overall, it also turned out to be the finest example to date of my brush and ink technique.
Virginia Woolf. 2012. I create most of my work using pen and ink, only using pencil in the preliminary stages of its creation or, on occasion, in my sketchbook. However, I do enjoy creating an occasional pencil piece and this portrait both shows my skill at its best and was yet another indicator that I was on the right path.
Madonna and Child. 2014. I expect to see excellence in all my work, including my sketchbook. This drawing was the first to show that I was serious about leveling up my sketchbook work and exemplifies the path that I knew would force me to grow and reach that excellence in my sketchbook and elsewhere.
Stephen Biko. 2017. A portrait of the iconic South African anti-apatheid activist and martyr. This drawing is without a doubt a crystal clear example of how much my draftsmanship had evolved between 2010 and 2017.
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