A bit about me.
I've enjoyed drawing and painting from a young age, and as a child was encouraged by family to explore different media (so long as they were washable!). I finally acquired my own set of oil paints, and the rich colours, buttery texture, and aroma of linseed oil had me hooked. I remember my first oil experiment, painting clouds--blending the layers of oil, I watched the clouds change formation just as they do in nature, but mine was the hand in charge. That painting need never be "finished", because the processes of nature never stop. This gave me a whole new understanding of the creative process.
Although I can create in many styles, in different media, oil paint allows me to make paintings as I feel they "ought to" look: I grew up surrounded by realistic scenes painted by my father, A. H. Dixon, and his friend, Frank Western Smith, who both worked in oils. My taste was thus set when I was young and impressionable. For me, coming to landscape realism, rendered in oil, is coming home. If that makes me "traditional", so be it.
As for the Bridge River Valley, every time I visited from the city, I was struck by the human pace of life, and possibilities limited only by my imagination--and by the laws of nature, whose uncompromising presence is undisguised by the safety railings of urban life. The thought of life away from push-button comfort seemed daunting, but once it became possible to come live here, my subconscious never left me alone, sending me taunting dreams about the road to Bralorne, demanding to know whether I was equal to the journey. I finally accepted the challenge, moved here, and continue to be awed by the moods and power of nature's raw elements, whose essence I hope to capture in my work.
Although I can create in many styles, in different media, oil paint allows me to make paintings as I feel they "ought to" look: I grew up surrounded by realistic scenes painted by my father, A. H. Dixon, and his friend, Frank Western Smith, who both worked in oils. My taste was thus set when I was young and impressionable. For me, coming to landscape realism, rendered in oil, is coming home. If that makes me "traditional", so be it.
As for the Bridge River Valley, every time I visited from the city, I was struck by the human pace of life, and possibilities limited only by my imagination--and by the laws of nature, whose uncompromising presence is undisguised by the safety railings of urban life. The thought of life away from push-button comfort seemed daunting, but once it became possible to come live here, my subconscious never left me alone, sending me taunting dreams about the road to Bralorne, demanding to know whether I was equal to the journey. I finally accepted the challenge, moved here, and continue to be awed by the moods and power of nature's raw elements, whose essence I hope to capture in my work.