Author: Ian Carter

Biography of Ian Carter Artist (www.iancarterartist.com). My painting has developed on many levels. Before becoming a full-time painter, I worked as an architect planning and designing mostly healthcare projects. I have studied at and attended painting workshops at the Glasgow School of Art, Scotland, The Federation of Canadian Artists, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, in Vancouver BC and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. I like to read and am writing a novel. My other interests include learning Spanish, playing the Classic Guitar, Art, and travelling where our most recent visits have been in Mexico, Europe, Russia, Scandinavia and the Mediterranean. I would say that my painting abilities are mostly self-taught. I was born in England. My parents moved to Scotland where I spent my informative years including gaining a degree in Architecture at the Glasgow School of Art. I practiced Architecture in Scotland and Nigeria before moving to Vancouver BC in 1974, where I retired in 2013. The three years in Nigeria taught me much about applied arts and sculpture Now my wife and I split our time each year between Vancouver in the summer and San Miguel de Allende in the winter. My paintings are intuitive, en plein air and impressionist working in mostly watercolours but sometimes in acrylics from the abstract to impressionist. My work spans a broad range of subjects and styles, including landscapes, buildings and seascapes. I attempt to create a feeling, an impression, rather than a picture, to evoke a deeper emotional response from the viewer. I had a successful Showing at Trafalgar’s Restaurant in 2016. In 2017, I started a new series in acrylics named “Imagined Landscapes of Mexico” which was introduced at my December 9, 2017 solo show at Meme Brooks Design Studio. In 2018, I had a solo Show and Exhibition at the Bordello Gallery in San Miguel de Allende and at Visual Space on Dunbar, in Vancouver. 2019 has been a successful year already with solo Shows at the Federation of Canadian Artists in May, June and July. I October 2019, I am showing four large acrylic paintings at the San Diego Convention Centre in California. I like to work in watercolour, with as much under-drawing as I can get away with. I like the unpredictability of a medium which is affected as much by humidity, gravity, the way that heavier particles in the wash settle into the undulations of the paper surface, as by whatever I wish to do with it. In other mediums you have more control, you are responsible for every mark on the page — but with watercolour you are in a dialogue with the paint, it responds to you and you respond to it in turn. This encourages an intuitive response, a spontaneity which allows magic to happen on the page. When I begin an illustration, I usually work up from small sketches — which indicate in a simple way, something of the atmosphere or dynamics of an illustration; then I create drawings on a larger scale. When I've reached a stage where the drawing looks complete enough I'll transfer it to watercolour paper, but I like to leave as much unresolved as possible before starting to put on washes. This allows for an interaction with the medium itself, a dialogue between me and the paint.