'I have seen enough of this world ' paint me a new one!' That is my motto when working the canvas. It is not that I have anything against the world I live in. To the contrary, I love my life and I love the beauty that can be found in it. However, as majestic as nature is, as dramatic as the human condition can be, there is simply no match for the infinity that is the imagination. Whatever the mind's eye can see, can be converted into colors on canvas.
I was born in Carmichael California and from that time I was always fascinated with color. To a child, color can forge powerful memories. As we grow we learn to associate emotions with colors. When we see yellow we think of friendship, red - we think of love (or anger), blue we think of as sadness etc. So we can thank colors for helping to develop our emotional palette. I was always doodling in school and daydreaming of places that I knew did not exist. However, this never kept me from creating grand worlds in my mind and hoping to someday travel there. Eventually, I started to draw what I was imagining and then I simply kept on imagining and drawing.
It was not until I was 28 that I decided I should take a shot at oil painting. I had moved to Long Beach California to finish my education in Computer Science and had caught an episode of 'The Joy of Painting', one afternoon after class, with the late Bob Ross. His gentle approach and 'anyone can paint' attitude finally sent me into a new venture. I had always wanted to try oil painting but I feared that I would give in to a perfectionist mentality and never complete a work. In the beginning, I would say that this was indeed the case. At times I got lost in the minutia and the approach derailed my central goal for the painting. The other problem was my overzealous plan for the painting. I wanted to create a masterpiece with sharp focus realism right away and this simply was not feasible as I needed many years of practice to achieve anything worth looking at. As the years have gone on, however, I have learned to control my emotions while painting. I have a better grasp of the goal in mind and I plan out my work in stages so not to get lost in endless 'fix-it' sessions.
I have been painting steadily since 2005 and I see myself painting till the grave. I am now hooked on my own imagination. As I cross the halfway point of a project, my mind starts to get anxious and starts generating a new idea which leads to a new world to paint. When the work is complete, I step inside it with my mind and try to imagine if it still looks like what I had imagined. In truth, I am never completely satisfied with any work because if you are satisfied with anything then that means you have stopped learning. Every painting is a learning experience and I always look for the weakness in each new work.
As you stroll through my gallery, try to imagine if you can see yourself in that landscape, or holding that still object, or engaged in that action. As an artist, I am seeking a response to my work. My goal is the same as most artists - to get your attention. If you stop and stare at a painting then something in that painting has sparked an emotion and this was the real objective of my work. If you ask me, a painting that invokes no emotion is not worth the canvas it was painted on.
Ryan Williams joined Pixels.com Licensing on September 14th, 2013.
