Beautifully Ugly Portraits 2011

I love portraits--it is what I paint.  I also love photography. I've been experimenting with a few self portraits from this past year--2011. Some of them were taken in Europe, some in Canada. I look ugly in some of them but still, I like them as photographs as they capture a mood. In fact, I have just recently found my true painting muse and passion--I was stumbling a bit, how to get started agin, what exactly do I need to paint? One cannot paint without a serious passionate obsession that is the driving force behind the brutal and long hours of creation (at least I can't). And alas, this New Year (to be specific) my passion became known to me. Less subject matter, more macro portraiture. My subjects will include all life (animal/plant too) in a unique portrait form. It has always been there, a vision I'd written down in blurred words and fuzzy images but this New Year, the images cleared and the words were there in bold black and white. Let the painting begin again for me! I leave you with the following photographs of my year now past. Hope you get some sense of mood from the following photos and perhaps can piece together the sort of year I had in 2011. It was the worst of times... it was the best of times...

Here's to  a happy and adventure filled New Year for you and me!