E.J.
Potter Biography
Art was always the primary focus in my parents'
household and throughout my childhood there was a steady stream of
highly creative people in our home. My mother was a poet and my father
an architect, both with a voracious appetite for knowledge. We would
spend hours perusing books filled with images of French, Italian,
Greek and Japanese architecture, art and landscapes. They encouraged
me with classes in painting, sculpture, and drawing.
After studying
art at the University of Tennessee, I enrolled in the University
of the Seven Seas and sailed the oceans visiting dozens of countries
and many of the world's most famous museums and architectural wonders.
Seeing firsthand the artworks and structures that I knew so well
from books was a pivotal point in my life. Returning home, I had
the good fortune to study privately with the respected portrait
artist, Armande Tiebo de Navarre, who gave me the confidence to pursue
painting.
Those early learning experiences, however, were
only the beginning of what would become my daily endeavor to create.
Painting has been my full-time passion for over twenty-five years.
Although I've had some wonderful instructors, time and diligence
have been my real teachers, enabling me to develop my own techniques.
It is the extensive and time consuming process
of layering color over color that distinguishes my landscapes, creating
the luminous quality in my work. It can take up to two years of layering
and drying to achieve the light that emanates from my oil paintings.
It is through this prolonged process that lessons and discoveries
occur. It is my goal to continue to grow creatively with an ever-expanding
clarity of vision.
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