Painting Process
In the ‘Art Resources’ section there is a Painting Demonstration that gives a detailed, step by step account of how I went about a major painting (which took about a week to complete).
It can be summed up as follows:

• Inspiration

• Reference

• Layout

• Preliminary painting

• Final painting

Many of my paintings take much less time (1 to 2 days). They do, however, go through the same steps though often the steps flow seamlessly into one another.

Tools
Charcoal for preliminary drawing/s
Paint brushes for almost all applications of paint, though sometimes I flick or spatter colour on.

Landscape Paintings
Over a 40 year period, the bulk of my paintings have been representational landscapes. I love to paint clean air, unspoiled places, bush, streams, coastline, the beauty of Creation, rural charm.

Along the way I became fascinated with ways of capturing and portraying lots of light.
I also began to realise that I was not bound to paint what I could see. I could include what I imagined… light and colour effects, objects, compositional changes. This opened the way to paint visual stories and led naturally to...

Still Life Paintings
Still Life gives enormous scope for imagination. Common objects offer endless story telling possibilities - once they are seen as symbols!

General comments
The choice of objects and their juxtaposition to one another can begin to convey meanings beyond the objects themselves. In this way a group of objects can become a visual parable. Sometimes I give objects human or animal personality, even to the point of adding facial features (see #208 ‘The Holdup Gang’).

My purpose may be purely for fun (‘The Holdup Gang’). I may wish to present home truths in a gentle, humorous way (the Jug paintings). I may wish to convey something that has deep, spiritual significance to me and to present this as strongly and eloquently as I can (#225 ‘Remember Me’ and #226 ‘Given for You’).

Sometimes I include words in my paintings if I feel they will assist the viewer to understand what I am trying to convey.

Influences on me/my art
Mindset
All of my paintings come through the grid or sieve of what and who I am. Because I am a follower of Jesus whose primary desire is to glorify God in all that I do, I will only paint that which I feel is in harmony with Him and His ways.

That does not mean I am limited to doing “religious art”. I am free to paint anything… but I seek to have an overall wholesome, enjoyableness about my work. Better still, I seek to inspire and uplift the viewer. At the highest level, I seek to come up with paintings that have the touch of the Spirit of God upon them.

Things I see / experience
most of my landscape paintings through the years have been born out of things I’ve seen and been inspired by. Many of my more recent paintings have started with an idea in my mind. Sometimes that idea came as I was praying or reading the Bible or listening to someone else talking or telling a story. I try to record such ideas in written and loosely sketched form. I then go about finding reference that will be useful in bringing the idea into tangible reality.

Current events
Over the years I have done some social comment paintings. Some of these have made some people very angry. I don’t have any paintings in this category currently on my web site.

Influence on viewers
Ultimately I want my paintings to reveal that there is a great, overarching, divine purpose behind life and creation; to present facets of the wonder and beauty of God’s character; to cause viewers to be drawn to Him through Jesus Christ; to have a prophetic anointing that transcends the present… sees into the future… inspires hope.

I don’t claim to have reached the above objectives. But they are what I dare to strive towards.
 

Graham Braddock.