As we begin a new year, I would like to start by thanking all of you who have shared your enjoyment for this column with me and welcome new readers. As an artist, I created The Artist's Perspective with a goal of fostering artistic thought, through my observations and experiences. This year I hope to expand upon it and enjoy having you along.

The very tail end of last year brought an adventurous experience I'll call - Guided by the light. It's my belief that all artists are keen on light. Light offers both illumination and contrast, and contrast is one way we define many things in life. Contrast certainly defines shape and depth and here's an adventurous example. A close friend of mine bought a new plane. A life long pilot, he spontaneously decided he wanted to keep it in Florida for the winter. That's where I come in. I am not a life long pilot, rather someone with a life long love of planes and one who loves seeing things from the air. This plane is a bush plane, small and capable of landing almost anywhere. Maybe not the first choice for the mission in front of us, which was a one day trip from Winchester to Palm Beach, but certainly up for the task. We were off by 8:15am on a beautiful, but chilly late December morning and our 8 hour journey begins.

Now as a landscape painter, I cannot state the advantage enough, of seeing land from above. Among so many things, you see light's effect on the land. That's the looking down part of it, but then there's the looking out and around part too. Seeing clouds and weather movement at an elevated level, along with shadows across the land, offers a form of affirmation and understanding of light, hard to be replicated on the ground.

Our day trip kept us in the company of the Blue Ridge, then reflective views of the low coastal land, onto the always weather interesting north Florida areas and finally into those puffy, cotton like, cumulus cloudy skies of south Florida. It is there that my story could really begin.

Like trees, clouds are the kind of thing that painters in general, but new painters especially, struggle with. At least part of the problem with both, is an understanding of what it is you are actually seeing. To paint anything just by painting what you think you see, can create difficulties and even with understanding_we all may choose to represent any object as we artistically choose. As I've often said, there really are no rules here. As an artist you can do as you like, opinions be damned.

But if representation with some sense of realism is your goal, time spent painting_in of itself, is not a fair exchange rate for actually understanding what it is you are seeing. A tree is not a stick with a green ball on top, any more than a cloud is a ball of cotton. A tree is a wooden skeleton with thousands of leaves and just as there are many types of trees, which change with each season, there are many types of clouds and they change with the wind and atmospheric conditions.

Without turning this into a science project, clouds are formed by moisture and therefor are obviously not solid objects, but gaseous forms which light reflects off of. This reflective property offers an opportunity for contrast.

If light hits the top, you have a strong light appearance, contrasted by a darker bottom. Time of day, such as a setting sun and other conditions, effect those lights and darks and their color, but the billowing shape of clouds makes them even more complicated.

Now imagine not seeing them from below or above and not flying through them, but around them as though they were obstacles. My friend said, "Enjoy this." and at an elevation of 2500 feet, in the company of these immense and towering elephants of the sky, I navigated around them for miles of continuous left and right bank turns.

All along I was being guided by the light.

Mostly blue sky above and openings of the land below, the afternoon sunlight illuminating the top and sides of one, would be contrasted by the shadows of another and an ever changing path would be made apparent. Each cloud a completely different size and shape, but its shape completely evident by the light upon it. What could be mesmerizing, was a most thrilling experience and in many ways offered a creative catharsis and renewed passion for what I love to paint. I can touch a tree, but clouds are much more heavenly. It is a reminder that as an artist of any kind, we should try not to just create what you see, but to truly experience it whenever possible.

In closing, here's a quick shout out to the Middleburg Arts Council's "Cabin Fever" art show, hosted by Byrne Gallery on February 8th through March 2nd.