Create Your Own World...Instruction aimed to free up your painting style

I paint and draw first for the simple pleasure of putting color on paper, and then to create paintings that stand out because they fuse realistic images and strong abstract designs. In some paintings realism is dominant and in others, abstract design dominates. As a result, my work shows a wide range of styles. Throughout, I believe my paintings show bold compositions. I paint diverse subjects, most often landscapes but also still life and abstracts, using watercolors, acrylics, pastels or charcoal. I love watercolors for their luminous, fresh appearance, acrylics for their immediacy and simplicity, pastels for their intense colors and ease of application, and charcoal for the range of values and richness of the darks.  Over the last 20 years, my paintings have been accepted in many competitive juried shows, and are in the collections of Tiffin University and Stark State College, Canton, Ohio.

I came by an interest in art early in life. I grew up in New York City. My father took the family for Sunday outings to the Metropolican Museum of Art. As a boy I became familiar with Monet, Rembrandt, Vermeer and the many other masters in that great museum. As an adult I attended numerous painting workshops taught by nationally recognized instructors. In 1995 I was accepted as an instructor in painting in the Education Department at the Toledo Museum of Art. After I retired in 2012 from the faculty of the College of Medicine of the University of Toledo, I began teaching wlatercolor, acrylic, pastel and charcoal painting at the Toledo Museum of Art, as well as at the Toledo Artists' Club, Art Supply Depo, and other venues in northwest Ohio, Maine, Michigan and Indiana.

My formal education is in Biomedical Science; I have a doctorate in Human Physiology from the University of Rochester, Rochester, New York.
http://www.dadandrenee.com