I’ve always been a visual person, pretty much needed to see something to understand it, a visual artist. I recently discovered (through my son) I probably have aphantasia. I don’t see images in my mind, I can’t imagine an image, my minds eye is blank, basically a black hole. Which explains how I have drawn and painted my entire life.
I scribble to start to draw, draw to then paint, find a pattern, a way to see an idea.
After college, I worked with images in the dark room to put together images to paint from. Not photo realism but more of figurative expressionism. I worked with and from images of people who were around me as well as images from many other sources. I manipulated images in the dark room, creating multiple images in an image, which was always hit or miss using negatives. Today software and digital images are much easier to manipulate and blend into one another. The painting “Cannis” is a current example of blending images into one another.
When I paint I rotate the canvass, at times painting upside down. Which evolved into paintings that can be hung multiple ways, the painting “Collage” is the most recent example. It can be displayed in any of four ways. I’ve always worked this way.