Changing Styles as an Artist

©Mary Montague Sikes

I've been an artist and a painter for almost all of my life. In my early years, when my children were young, I painted many portraits. My work often started with pastel working drawings, then shifted to either oil or acrylics on canvas. I was influenced by the beautiful Impressionist paintings of Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, Rembrandt, and more.

As children, my daughters often suffered through sessions posing for me to paint portraits of them. The painting on the left of my mother with baby Amy was done from a photograph. It hung for many years in my parents' home. I never created a painting of my father, but I did one or more of just about everyone else in our family.

Over the years, I have experimented with numerous forms of art, including marble sculpture and ceramic pots. I even tried creating a bronze sculpture but did not make the lost wax process mold in the the correct proportions. Thus I literally lost months of work when the wax melted away, leaving no mold for the bronze pouring.

Right now, in my studio, I have several acrylic paintings in process, a few cold wax paintings at various stages, and Yupo papers awaiting my special application of Robert Doak watercolors. All of this work is or will be mostly abstract.

In many ways, I long to make large realistic paintings once again. I still like to watch scenic work grow from the big, blank canvasses hanging on specially designed walls. I love the scent of acrylic paint inside my studio.

Who knows? Perhaps portraits will blossom one more time on the walls of my studio.