The Artist

Gilbert PJ Gilbert our artist, was a professional photographer for over 20 years. He later became a lecturer in a college, and taught business, and business psychology, but his first love, was always art.

 

During the time he was a photographer, his main work was general photography. This included weddings, portraits, and commercial photography. Although this type of work required artistic flare, it wasn’t the type of photography he wished to create, it paid the bills. However, now, the photographs he takes are of his own choice, and deliberately taken to fulfil his purposes, i.e to sell as a photograph, or to be used for art purposes.

 

Our artist enjoys creating landscape, seascape, cityscape,  local and national scenes of beauty, as well as portraits of domestic, farm, and zoo animals, as well as people.

 

When describing his work he said “I would probably describe myself as a general artist because I paint such a wide range of everyday topics. I wouldn’t say I am specialized in any one field. I see beautiful pictures all around that I just want to capture a likeness of on paper, e.g dogs, cats, ivy growing up a tree, or on a wall of an old house, to wonderful sun rises etc”.

 

Our artist’s preferred media is polychromos pencils. He said “I try, although I don’t always achieve, to capture an absolute likeness. I’ve found polychromos and water color pencils help me achieve my desired outcome. Although I do enjoy using water colours, and mixed media as well”.

 

He in the main, try’s to capture an accurate and realistic image with his pencils, but occasionally enjoys painting with black ink and color, which in his opinion gives a surreal effect, but also captures some representation of what he is drawing.

 

He said of himself “I believe I can improve daily, I have a lot to learn, and I’m a long way off perfect. When I look at other artist’s work, I sometimes wish I was as good as them. I can see just how much work has gone into their portraits and pictures. They inspire me to create and attempt to paint more intricate pictures. There’s a standard I wish to achieve, and I’m not there yet, but it motivates me to keep producing work, for I believe the more I produce work, the better my work will become”.

 

He also said, “If I ever achieve the standard of art I’m aiming for, then the work that I will achieve will be absolutely brilliant, because that’s what I think of their work”.

 

He went onto say, “Although my work has not reached it’s full potential, I thank God that what I have produced brings pleasure to others, and I thank my customers for their kind comments, and I give praise to my Lord for giving me this talent, for I truly believe he has given me a gift, one that I am fully grateful for”.