Painting With God

Today was 2nd Saturdays...
It is a day when I open my studio to the public along with my fellow artists at Winter Street Studios.

It was the usual -- I got there early after eating a bagel at Einsteins, got a sandwich to go for later, opened, turned on the air conditioner because it was going to be hot!

I took out some paints and began. Since I had sold a figurative painting last time and the numbers of my human forms in my artwork were dwindling - I decided to review my sketchs from life drawing classes and look for inspiration.

But as many of you know, my mind and my eye are always working. You can see here I used my camera to capture not just the painting I was working on, but an image which is art unto itself. In a way you could call it a canvas, artist's paint on paper all the time. This was the bottom of a cup I used to clean my brushes. Interesting when you look at many of the pieces of my art which contain circles - a theme that keeps reoccuring.

I had many visitors, some I knew, some artists, and some I just met. I worked on my "inbetween" paintings -- this is where I take a digital art on canvas and paint on it. This is a picture of one called "paintndigitalclutter" it is based on another piece called "clutter". Here I painted directly onto the digital art piece - sometimes it felt like coloring, sometime I broken the rules and colored outside the lines! But that's what we do, us artists...see things in a different way.

After I left the studio today, I wandered around, called Mom & Dad, and got dinner and a movie. I rented "Conversations with God" -- and this is what struck me -- yes, I too hear that voice in my head, I too hear it as my own voice. I was told once when I was a teenager - "you are god, god is you". It has always stayed with me.

So this last piece of art you see hear I created tonight. It uses all my disciplines. It contains photos I took of an amazing cloud and sunlight formation I saw as I was leaving the studio today. It contains photos documenting the figurative drawing that I did as well as the painting that was inspired by that drawing the was started today. I combined them all into a single digital piece. I named it "Painting With God 004".

Someone asked me today, how can you do all this artwork and still hold a corporate job. I told them when I paint, when I draw, when I photograph, when I create digitally - I loose myself. In reality I learned from watching the movie today -- I do not loose myself -- I find myself, I connect and that connection allows me to create and communicate some amazing ideas.

So this piece is the first in my "Painting With God" Series... it's combination of Drawing, Painting, Photography and Digital Art is what makes this art unique. I am excited to see where these art pieces lead, and what conversations they begin and what questions they answer.

Copyright 2007 William H Miller All Rights Reserved