Richard W. Linford

The picture is of me wearing my usual painter’s costume, while standing in front of a painting I did of the Jerusalem Wailing Wall. I had art class training when I was young and did little with my talent until semi-retirement as an attorney at law several years ago. Perhaps one of the most interesting things I learned from my art instructor was how to hold a pen loosely by its end and rather than try to express an image in straight rigid lines or hatching, let the image with ink as it were flow on the paper, a technique that tends to give life and movement to the image. Since beginning to paint again, I have found a great deal of satisfaction – my belief is art is therapy – by trying to create a painting every day or two, until today I have painted somewhere north of 3000 – 4000 paintings. My approach has been, and still is, to rotate from painting a portrait to a landscape to an abstract to a still life and sometimes even to a collage. I work in oil and acrylic, watercolor, pencil and pen. I have refined my art techniques slowly, having watched hundreds of art videos, including videos about the old masters and their methods, including, and not to be criticized, use of the Bob Ross two inch or larger brush. Another technique I have found successful is “NOT” to mix paints on a pallet; instead pour the paints onto the canvas and and mix them on the canvas. This approach tends to avoid muddy colors and generates more of a van Gogh effect.