Transitioning from photographer to painter is, in many ways, natural and even intuitive. Composition, story, body line, light, and shadow remain essentially the same when translating three dimensions into two, independent of the medium.

The difficulty in making this transition, beyond mastering the obvious mechanical processes—mixing paint, handling brushes, and so on—is the vast increase in the number of choices one must make at every step. Even in a photographic process, where every decision involving light, shape, form, and environment may be intentional, painting introduces additional layers of complexity each time the brush touches down to mix and pick up paint, and then again when it touches down to deposit it.

Then there is the constant struggle not simply to copy the reference images. After spending 40 years trying to make photographs look like paintings, making paintings look like photographs was never part of the evolution. Instead of simply adopting an established photographic voice, the process becomes one of adapting that voice to a different medium.

All of these shifts in perspective have made the transition from photographer to painter both interesting and, no doubt, a lifelong endeavour. Following are a few paintings that reflect that journey: