My first love will always be drawing and painting the human form.   The endless amount of ways that the human form can express itself fascinates me.  I especially enjoy portraiture.  Not just capturing a likeness, but capturing that person’s spirit and connecting in a meaningful way to the viewer is immeasurably rewarding to me.  I also enjoy the different approaches to portraiture available to me as an artist – in terms of medium, application, and style.  There are so many ways of telling a story with portraiture.

Other subjects of interests influence my artwork greatly as well.  Antiquated objects, such as old photography and album cover art from past eras intrigue me and become the subjects of visual conversations.  Even rusticated tools and old useless objects are interesting to me because once they don’t have any utilitarian associations they are just objects and shapes that could be anything.  Perhaps those objects could be icons from past civilizations or important and powerful symbols.

My work strives for an eccentric beauty.  I try to express myself visually the way I perceive the world around me.  I find myself breaking things down or building them up as far as I can take them.  I push and pull mediums and ideas until they arrive at a point where they feel satisfying to me.  In some cases the subject of the piece dictates how I handle the medium, in other cases the medium itself dictates the subject.  Much of the process is by feel.  I think of it as visual jazz.

– Austin Gabriel Pittman