Painting animals

Through most of my artwork, I am usually picking some animal as my subject. You may ask why I am always painting animals, why not nudes, landscapes, cities or fruit? I started painting landscapes, awhile back. I actually started Saturday mornings with Bob Ross. I can thank Bob Ross for my initial passion for art and painting. I loved his easy going attitude, he was the most fabulous hippie that I would have loved to have met. Sadly, he was before my time, and I missed out on meeting such an art God. I became really good at it, painting exactly like Bob Ross. However, there really wasn’t a connection for me. I dropped art for a while, because I couldn’t see where it was going. Just recently, I picked it back up again, and again, painting landscapes, and started with a few portraits. I wasn’t quite impressed with myself. Then I started on cats. I thought to myself, “hmmm, I’m on to something..” However, I still hadn’t fully connected with my art yet. It was when I did a mash up of my creative mind and the cat that sparks flew and it became an instant passion that I romantically pursued with all of my heart. My emotions flowed onto the canvas, I was able to create the feelings I had in full color. And, having a total blast doing it. I felt I had reached a new level of enlightenment in my paintings, one that took me to a higher level of consciousness. On my home page of aprilsalleycatart.com you can see several examples of where my imagination greets the animal in the painting and kisses it into reality. Sometimes, the eyes will stare deep into your soul and say, “I’m taking a lick of this rainbow ice cream, whatcha gonna do about it?” such as in my painting “unbiased panther”. The point of painting animals is the animals are the key to my imagination. They unlock the door of my emotions and artitual soul. As artists, we all need to find our key, the one that unlocks our full potential as artists. I was lucky. I didn’t have to search long to find my key, but I do know some artists that haven’t quite found their key yet. What’s your key that unlocks your full potential?

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