This genius has a new art project in mind.

I left Europe and moved to Miami, Florida in 1992. I was still working in the real world, but I knew when I retired that I wanted to pursue a career in art, and art promotion. I didn’t retire until 2010, and by that time I’d moved to my wife’s home state, Ohio. All I have left of Florida is memories and many hundreds of photographs filed in my art drawer and computer.

Recently I finished a painting which portrayed a morning when I went walking on 16th avenue in Miami Beach. It was fun playing with the painting as I toyed with the scene to create the different images; and, yes, I took artistic freedoms along the way to make the picture. That’s what artist do…right?

Anyway, this isn’t about my last painting, it’s about my next one. I began this article to discuss a moment remembered from the past. A moment that might create a composition; which, when considered fully, just might make a masterpiece…or something worth going for.

When I first moved to Miami, I hired a fishing guide to take me fishing on some of my days off. We fished all over. He was very good, and came with all the equipment I needed to enjoy myself. We fished all the canals that had the Peacock bass in them (which was one of my great thrills), and we also fished the everglades  for the black Bass, which was also one of my thrills.

I knew someday I would attempt to paint pictures of my experiences fishing on the canals, because it was so picturesque. So, to get an idea for a new painting, I thumbed through some old photos twenty years past, and decided to create a man’s world – fishing in the everglades, and totally enjoying it. The drawing below is the culmination of piecing together of several photos to create a composition. The stretched watercolor paper anxiously waiting the first stroke of a brush is 22″X30″, and the sketch below is 11″X15″. The graphite drawing should give a semblance of the composition, and how it will work when the painting is finished. Now all I need to do is make several different color sketches to work the best and most attractive painting.