Summer Art Blockbuster!

That's right Summer is here and it is going to be a SPLASH!  First News is that my ink work, Bass, Crappie, Perch, first place in the NSA Art Show qualified and will be featured in the National Art Convention at the Woodland Waterway Marriott June 18-19 2014.

The Six Foot Tall Boots for Bootiful Wimberley will be arriving any day and the 20 artists will start painting their designs in an art gallery space in Wimberley Texas.  My BOOT, The Birds of the Hill Country, will feature 14 species of birds and will be stationed at the Wimberley Visitor's Center this July.  I am excited to begin the painting of the birds on that giant boot.

My wife and I will be traveling to Alaska and Denali National Park for a North American Safari.  we searching for Grizzly Bears and salmon action, Moose, Caribou, Elk, Dall sheep, Wolves, maybe Musk Oxen, foxes, and any other creature we might encounter.  Dog Sledding, Whales, and Kayaking--hiking and then we follow the safari up with a 7 day CRUISE to relax!  

I am posting the steps to my POND SLIDERS painting.  This painting made me reflect and realize things about my art, about why i create, and why i do not want to compromise my style to just be accepted or to fit into someone's category or genre.  I am unique.  I didn't ask to be.  I wanted to grow up and be normal like everyone else but it didn't happen.  I am self taught in almost all things.  I even taught myself to tie my shoes---and my method of tying shoes is not your normal way either.  My lifelong obsession with art is also a self taught journey.  I mix media constantly because I do whatever it takes to create the image i am searching for in my zen-like state of creating.  Take a look at the variety of galleries on my website, doughiser.com, and it will seem that many different styles of artists created all that art.  The same goes for my writing, my novels, and stories.  I write romance, sci-fi, adventure, mystery, young adult, fantasy.  You cannot put me in a category and that is what makes for a conundrum.  The best fit for me is wildlife artist and prolific writer.  I LOVE wildlife art, all of it, even though most of it looks too much like a photograph.  I like realism in animal art too, but I also want my art to reflect me and my view.  The recent Turtle painting, POND SLIDERS, reflects this attitude.  The pond sliders I saw in the water recently had shells covered in algae and moss and they had muddy feet and mud on their shells.  I want to make my art real but go beyond that and make things bright, more colorful.  I used baby turtles to get the bright shells and dynamic patterns.  As you see in the painting my turtles are brilliantly patterned and colorful.  Not like real life but more hyper-real as if they were the turtles that swim in iridescent rivers in Heaven.

Many artists work has a similar look to it.  I take pride in my evolution as an animal artist that my work looks like no other artist---so i do not compromise--and I hope you like it because I LOVE creating animal ART!