About Lewis > Statement

Artist Statement

I have always been very creative. I was drawing and painting at a very early age, and my Mom and Dad always made sure I had blank paper and coloured pencils to use. In fact, I began my art career drawing on the blank copies of old Insurance forms! I really began to get back into the arts when I was living in Vancouver. I had a basement suite and through all the rain, I needed something to bring up my mood. I started with some basic watercolours then continued with oils and acrylics.

I graduated from the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary in 2001, specializing in Marketing and Information Technology. Throughout my education I continued to paint and draw. In 2004 I partnered up with a colleague and created ArtistLane.com and online art gallery for new and professional artists. It started out as a way for me to get my art more exposure, but has since become an excellent merger of my university education and my artistic passion.

A lot of my art has been inspired from the early Canadian masters such as A.Y. Jackson, who actually painted the Rocky Mountains, and Emily Carr who I think truly captures the Canadian costal landscape feel in her work. Admiring works by these artists, and also bringing in the colours and texture of modern artists, I have slowly developed my own style.

Painting landscapes with broad strokes and vibrant colour gives me the ability to experiment with my own creativity and to show Alberta as I see it. I use my painting style to bring out the colours or the prairies and mountains that are sometimes missed.

Current works in acrylic have given me a little more freedom to work the way I like. I want to paint with large and quick movement – a method that I was finding difficult with oil. The acrylic gives me the ability to work many colours into my canvases then brighten and highlight as I work. As you may be able to tell, I am not a realist painter; however, I do want the viewer to recognize an area or subject when I complete a painting.

Recently, I also have been creating a new series of Beargrass pictures that have really taken my work in a new direction.