The Impact Of Your First On Your Art

Nothing is currently coming to mind, so maybe there has never been an impact of a "first" on my art.

Never had much ambition to paint, a few drawings maybe but that interest was fading at some point as well. Just recently i felt the urgend need to paint though and so two paintings were created even though i am brutally untalented and never ever really painted before i like my creations very much. The first one is in context with the one year anniversay of my father´s death on 2.15. (hope anniversay is the right term for that - you get the picture, though).

This is the one i hold dear
https://fineartamerica.com/featured/wild-sunset-over-green-meadow-hans-zimmer.html

This one was made from the leftover color(s)
https://fineartamerica.com/featured/inferno-hans-zimmer.html

Too many loves, only a few paintings. No causal relationship.

Dave

First passion was photography. Tomorrow marks the 60 year point of when I really got started. My parents gave me a home darkroom kit for my 11th birthday and I've been hooked ever since. I never messed with drugs - but oh, those smells from darkroom chemicals - that must be what sucked me in. LOL


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~ Bill
www.BillSwartwout.com

Thank you, Hans.
Bill, very cool that your first passion coincided with art.

As a side note....I'm not looking for painters..OP says 'art.'

Hans, WOW, those are a couple of very powerful expressive emotion filled pieces of art. Your descriptions are wonderful too.

Not a first, but a passion non the less, is for tropical beaches.
My first visit to a tropical beach was Honeymoon in Hawaii.
But the vacation that created a passion for the tropics was a 2 week sail in the British Virgin Islands.
Since then, most every vacation includes tropical beaches.
I paint many tropical scenes and enjoy the virtual vacation I get while painting them and seeing the paintings on my walls.

Carlin...yes on both counts!!

My high school girlfriend gave me a painting she did of a sailing ship at sea...

I was amazed that someone could paint like that.

I kept it for decades but finally decided that it was time to go, so I gave it to the Salvation Army donation center.

Hopefully it found a good home.

Marlene,

You're asking for it:

My first True Love

Beverly June Criley

We were inseparable the first few years in high school ( High School of Music & Art, NYC)

But as the years went on, Bev became a young lady and I remained a little boy, so she turned to more adult interests.


Anyway, I was still able to prod her to continue her very capable artwork as she seem to continually wander off

After much pressure, she relented and contributed her talent to our yearbook, a project I took major responsibility for

Here is her homage to our fellow music students:




After high school, we went on our separate ways...She married a graduate of the Merchant Marine Academy , and I moved to the lower east side and became a beatnik.

Many years later, I met her at her happy 2 Jaguar home, in the toney suburbs of Seattle, as I was coming home from a trip throughout South East Asia



We kept in touch ever since.

By the way, recently I received the sad news that she is now a widow.

The future:......Hey you never know

First mourning.There is a lot in my life I would not have survived without Art . Hey, but who cares ?

So sorry , Marlene....post deleted, too difficult to relive it all. Am sure you understand.

Chuck, no offense, but I like Roger's story better.

My art is inspired by my desire to get away from people much of the time. Look at my work. I include people very rarely. So I'm not sure there's a first in there, unless it's the first time I discovered nature's rejuvenating powers.

If you look at my glamour/nude work, I suppose there's something in there that could be connected to a first love, but that may be looking too far into it. Might just be that I find women beautiful.

Nope - art and love , except my own love for art, never happened.

Here is another story of how a love has affected me and my art.

A few years later, attending Cooper Union, NYC



I was madly in love with Gunnel, the young lady on upper left- hand corner, not the young lady I was abusing in the upper right-hand corner...That's me there, still a boy.

Gunnel would have nothing to do with that child.

She did do a sketch of me, though, that I have treasured ever since,



Again, as with the other story, we eventually went our separate ways, she stayed on creating large abstract paintings, while knowing I could never match up, I went into the field of architecture.


Well, a few years ago I goggled her name, and lo and behold, there she was, still creating large abstract paintings.



I found out she lived relatively near to a venue I do in Maryland in the fall,..

I contacted her, and we have annual rendezvous ever since.

At the fair and at her lovely home



Throughout the year we keep e-mailing each other...Gunnel is always concerned about my welfare


Hey, you never know

Roger, thank you for sharing this story as well. I’m loving them!

Marlene,

This time:...My First Marriage

During the period when I was deeply involved in architecture, this beautiful young lady entered our office and entered my life



She too was deeply involved in architecture, but hadn't a chance to practice it until then, escaping from Communist Poland.

Eventually, she agreed to marry me, after a long pursuit



For some time after that it was pure bliss



But then as she got deeper and deeper into architecture, I was pulling away from it

Until it came to the point that both of us had to be set free.

She became involved with more and more responsibilities in projects throughout the world, being able to speak a myriad of languages, while I in due time started to stick crab claws into mussel shells, with difficulty speaking my native tongue.

So be it

Right now, I'm looking up to my left to see a drawing Anna had made while in school in Poland.




The last I heard about Anna, was that she became Professor Emeritus in Architecture at Washington State University.

And I still stick crab claws into musselshells

Be still my heart.

I was never a "film" photographer in the sense of developing my own film, having sophisticated cameras, working professionally. I was a film photographer because if you wanted to take photos, that's what you used (and did). So I had a little camera and I bought enough film to document important family events . . . birthdays and holidays and vacations and such . . . and that was about it. Then in the early 1990's I started leading groups of students to France. No way I was going to do that and not document it. So I bought more film . . . lots more film.
And I husbanded my supply carefully . . . one shot per event was about it. And when I got home, I had all the rolls developed and I made physical scrapbooks for the students to enjoy in the classroom. And so it went for 10 years . . . 15. And one day in about 2005 my son said, "Mom, you need to get a digital camera." "No, no I don't. I'm fine. I don't even understand those things. I'm fine." And my husband chimed in and said, "Nikki, Rob's right. You need to go digital." "No, no I don't." So . . .

They bought me a digital camera - a year before my next trip so I'd have time to practice. And by the time the trip rolled around, I was hooked. For me, digital meant the freedom to experiment. To try different perspectives. To play with aperture and shutter speed and composition. And all without worrying about the cost and nuisance of the next roll of film - or of getting it processed. It was liberating, it was freeing.

To this day I don't consider myself an "artist" in the traditional sense of the word (whatever that is). But I credit getting a digital camera with releasing whatever of "artist" there is inside me.

Roger,

Very bitter sweet stories.

That last one has me thinking.

In 2006, I fell in love, really for the first time, with a younger woman who was here from Poland on a visa. She was working as a waitress in the diner I was hanging out at during that period of time. Her name was Honorata. I believe the translation is Honor.

She was staying with her local aunt and uncle.

It was four to five months of profound happiness and love between us. She though had no intentions of immigrating to America. Little did I know, her mother was to die of cancer and she would cut her stay short by about a month.

During this period, answering Marlene's query, I had the first notions of the work I would do today.

I have looked up Honorata online, but to no avail. The reason is Poles after WW II became very sensitive about giving out addresses and phone numbers, the communist secret police spooked their society. So I can not find her.

Although during the massive ice storm in 2010, I met up with her uncle. News then was she was married and had an infant son. I was hoping she was happy with this, but the uncle told me she is not. I wont get into why not.

Honorata was an incredible life force for me. As her uncle would say, she is an incredible person.

Dave

good stories....

Because of all the psychological abuse such as false rumors and gaslighting which I was never able to prove, my art became a means of coping, by trying to show how I wish to be treated,... with clear, absolute concreteness and nothing left in the fog so it could be lied about later. I will spare you all the details, but it was not a nice romantic story to say the least.

I remember drawing a cool cyclops in second grade! I adored the Harryhausen films. Probably was my inspiration!

There ya go, Bruce!