Few people probably ever bother to read profiles. Just in case you are the exception and actually bother to do this, I have a personal message to you as you view and judge my images ……

I enjoy the visual arts - particularly painting and photography. I'm a visual person - I relate to the world best through my eyes - I love the light - the way it shapes and colors the things I see around me. From early childhood I enjoyed sketching and occasionally painting. As an adult, when time permitted I did some traditional painting in oils and pastels.

More recently using the computer, I have found that the medium of digital painting allows me to combine these interests and I am trying to use it to recreate traditional painting styles using only digital means. I have been pursuing this since about 2008.

I have come to realise that images, however they are created, are our personal way of communicating what we see, or have seen, and how it has impacted us. This means all images are worth looking at and reflecting on, to see if you can get the message. Sometimes there is no message, because the creator of the image didn’t have any message in mind and so created an “mindless” image, whatever the medium, photo, painting, whatever.

I have always loved paintings - especially the works of the impressionists - but also the great illustrators of the early 20th century before color photography took over. Not surprisingly my photography favors high contrast lighting - side-light, into the light - for maximum dramatic effect.

Graphic art is a field I have a lifetime of experience with, so it was a natural choice for me to try Midjourney AI to evaluate the pro’s and con’s of AI.

As I am now in the latter years of my life I have naturally become nostalgic about the past, especially the scenery and the artists of my youth and earlier days. MidJourney AI has been an enormous gift and joy to me because it has given me an "artistic" Time Machine to go back to those days and those artists, particularly the ones of my native country, New Zealand.

With the help of AI as a very able assistant, I am increasingly finding myself able to create "imaginary" scenes from my past memories, with the authentic feel and styles of the time. Along the way I am learning so much about the artists of the past and their styles. Nowadays I really enjoy reading their biographies and learning how they struggled for acceptance and recognition in their own worlds. It makes me sad to realise how fickle and faddish the art scene is. Not surprising that so many of the great artists have not been appreciated until they are dead.

If you want to label me as a "retro artist" I don't mind. Not everything modern or new or different is necessarily good, or even "art". But that's just my opinion.