Beam of Light - 12" x 16" oil painting on canvas
I suppose I should say a few things about myself and my paintings. I'm heavily inspired by nature's colors and motion. When I sit in front of a canvas I usually have a color in mind to start off with and everything sort of flows from there. Sometimes I have a loose idea but very few of my paintings are planned out. I call it "painting by instinct". I've found that the more I try to plan out a piece, the less happy I am with the results. When I just start painting without a plan, I come up with things I didn't know were there.
I'm not happy with every painting I do, but a long time ago my wife convinced me to just offer up everything and leave it to the viewers to decide what they like. I was very surprised to find out that many paintings that I would have sent to the garbage bin were often the fastest to sell. Shows you how much I know!
I started selling back in 2000 when I was painting small watercolors. I had a good little run from '00 - '05 on ebay where I sold over 300 watercolor paintings under the handle "goatlike". I've since changed my ebay name because "goatlike" is just too evil. I'm now "marks_art603". My ebay feedback can be viewed here: http://myworld.ebay.com/marks_art603. Because I was selling online I have kept a great digital record of my work. These paintings can be viewed at my Picasa Web Album. At the time of this writing (4/24/10), I'm still in the process of uploading the images. I'll get them all up very soon.
From 2006 - 2009, at 37 years old, I went to college at the New Hampshire Techinical Institute and earned an Associates Degree in Mechanical Engineering Technology and a Degree Manufacturing Engineering Technology. My goal was to learn drafting as I've always had an interest in detailed measurements and technical drawings. A very different art than my loose paintings, but when I was a kid a ruler and compass were as much a part of my drawing as pen and pencil. It was fun and I learned a great deal but I made a terrible mistake... I took an Introduction to Oil Painting class and my love of painting came flooding back.
And that brings us to now! I'm painting in oils and again trying to sell them over the internet (drafting jobs dried up the year I graduated college). I've started up my ebay auctions again and I'm also selling paintings on Etsy at: http://www.markwstevens.etsy.com/. I paint as often as possible and continue to keep a digital record of my work.
Check back in every now and then. Whenever I add paintings to my album or run a new auction or add paintings to Etsy I'll post a note here along with my other activites. I'm also a frequent tweeter (http://www.twitter.com/MarkS_Art) and have a facebook fan page (Mark's Art on Facebook), but I gotta say I'm much more active on twitter than facebook.
I think that's about all I got. Thanks for reading!
- Mark
