Why Art?

   Why did I start doing art? Anyone who knows me knows that I wasn't always an artist. I love art, love looking at art but initially planned on becoming a doctor. During the last year that I studied Pre- Medicine at university I met my husband. Knowing I wanted to marry him and to have a family I had to make some hard decisions, one of them being not to go to medical school. I began working at a laboratory. A few years later we married and started our own home. Having moved from our original residences we began literally from the ground up. Silverware, pans, towels, a mirror, an iron, we needed everything.

    After having acquired most of these basics we got a call from my brother in law saying he was getting married a few months later and we packed a few suitcases and moved to Austria to begin once again at the beginning. Fast forward a few years to the point where we had furniture. Now I began to think about the walls. We started at places that sold prints and although there were several we really liked (who doesn't like Van Gogh?), we wanted something special, something unique. We looked at artwork at art fairs and local galleries. And with the small budget we were operating on and the prices in our region buying anything wasn't even an option. Most pieces were going for something between one and five thousand, and years of looking at museums and art books had left me skeptical as to whether they were actually worth that much. 'I could paint that' I kept thinking and sometimes saying. My husband, who didn't believe me, challenged me by suggesting that I just didn't want to spend the money.

 So, I bought a how to paint book, three tubes of paint, blue, white and burgundy, 2 cheap canvases, and a hand full of brushes from a local hardware store for 2,99, Suffice it to say my current supplies have developed somewhat in both value and price, and got to work. I was so proud of my first two paintings and hung them immediately. In hindsight, I realize they were nothing to write home about but they got me started on my artistic journey.
  That was the start, from there I painted on and off over the next several years. Sometimes more and sometimes less intensively depending on what else was going on in my life. Last summer I celebrated the first of many milestones, 10 years of art.

      Over the last couple of years I have had increasingly more time for art and as a result have also become more skilled in a number of areas. 

I have done a lot more aquarelle:

As well as focussing on Botanicals:

 And doing a few larger pieces.

And, of course, the more I paint, the more I want to paint, and the more inspiration I glean from the beautiful, and often humorous, world around me.

  What do you do? Have you always done it, or did you come to it later in life? Let me know in the comments.

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