Newspaper story in the Tallahassee Democrat
Morning Glow 20 x 24
This is another painting from the Artport Show. I have had a great response to the show. And this weekend I got a nice article in the Tallahassee Democrat. (Special thanks to Amanda and Randi for their work on the show and the article). Here's the written part of the article and there is a link below to the newspaper's online version.
Attorney paints with poetry in mind
By Randi Atwood
"About 15 or 16 years ago, my wife gave me a watercolor set for Christmas to get me off the golf course," remembers Tallahassee artist and attorney Steve Andrews. "I'd come home from work, put the kids to bed and then pull my stuff out in the kitchen and start painting. I just loved it. It was an escape. It didn't have a deadline, and it never yelled at me."
An exhibit of Andrews' art is on display through Sept. 26 at the Artport Gallery in Tallahassee Regional Airport.
Andrews grew up in Titusville, and had his first real exposure to painting from some of the original Florida Highwaymen artists, who often stopped by his father's dental office with their work to sell.
"In our living room we had a Samuel Newton painting of a wave breaking on the beach. I would just stare at it for hours," says Andrews. "I can remember sitting on the couch and trying to figure out how he made it look like the water was actually falling over. Looking back, I wonder how much influence that painting had on me."
Andrews took art classes in high school, and had an art history minor at FSU, where he studied history. But law school and his private practice, which primarily takes cases involving workers' compensation and Social Security disability, took priority in his life for many years.
When Andrews got back into painting in the evenings, he became so involved that he had to set an alarm clock to remind him to stop and go to bed.
"I took a couple of lessons with a painter in Havana, and a few classes, but I really just learned by painting and painting and painting," he says. "That's the key to getting better. It's just like hitting a golf ball or tennis ball. You have to know what the paint is going to do, what works for a composition, how to make color work for you — and all those things just come from brush mileage."
He mostly used watercolors during that time, but eventually started working with oils. "I wanted to be able to paint bigger," Andrews explains. "When you paint with watercolor, it has to go behind glass, so you're limited in how big you can paint. Plus there's so much color and vibrancy that I can't get with watercolor. I paint almost exclusively in oil now."
Andrews' artistic emphasis is on landscape painting and subject matter concentrating on the vanishing landscape of Florida. He spends much of his time examining its natural beauty through plein air painting (painting outdoors).
"I do a lot of paintings at St. Marks and Lake Ella," says Andrews. "You've got the normal challenges of dealing with the weather and bugs, but the biggest thing is that you've got the whole wide world in front of you and you've got to edit it down to a composition that will work. I have to try to communicate that bright sparkle on the water right there."
Andrews says he is drawn to the North Florida and South Georgia landscape. He particularly loves rural farm scenes, and often paints old barns, fields and fences. He says that he learns something every time he paints, and he tries to make every painting better than any one he's ever done before.
"I'll often do photographs and outdoor studies as references. I just don't have the time to work without photographs," he says. "I often get ideas for paintings when I'm driving. I'm literally going down I-10 with the camera out the window, going click, click, click, click, click. I call them my 'car shots.'"
But Andrews does not consider himself a photographer, nor does he want his paintings to be photo-realistic.
"I used to paint tulips, and occasionally people who knew about tulips would try to explain to me that that isn't the way they actually grow," he says. "But that's not really what I'm doing. I'm trying to create mood. I'm not sure who said this originally but I'll paraphrase here: I don't want to be a journalist, I want to be a poet."
Here's a link to the actual story. I am sending you to google because if I give you a direct link it will ask you to sign up for the paper before you can read the story. Just click on the google link for "attorney paints with poetry in mind" and it should send you to the article.
http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&source=hp&q=steve+andrews+tallahassee+poetry&pbx=1&oq=steve+andrews+tallahassee+poetry&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=13520l17024l0l17287l18l16l0l0l0l1l1099l6653l0.2.3.3.1.0.1.3l13l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=e7a0bbe362cc4009&biw=1111&bih=627
Thanks for looking
