My approach to painting, and probably the reason I started painting in 1982, has been more about the personal satisfaction that comes from the process, rather than the finished product. I especially enjoy painting portraits of animals. It was not something I could imagine myself doing 40 years later, but there is something very pleasing about it. My wife and I are lucky enough to have a small camp in the Adirondacks, so being there has inspired me to try my hand at landscape paintings in acrylics and watercolors, along with a variety of other subjects, but I always seem to come back to painting animals, so that has become the area of art that I have spent most of my time pursuing,  all very simple stuff, but fulfilling, from my perspective.

Photography has also been something I’ve enjoyed doing, and that is probably where I have tried most often to capture the beauty of the Adirondacks and my love of nature in general in ways my brushes could not.

Somehow I have become a grandfather of five young kids under the age of 12, and I would not be honest about my enjoyment of painting if I didn't mention how satisfying it has been to sit at our kitchen table with them, splashing paint around, and to see them now drawing and painting on their own. With a sixth child on the way, I hope another apple will not be falling far from the tree.

Email:: skipvanlenten@gmail.com.