Hi! My name is Eliot. I'm an aspiring artist, sailor, welder, and many other things on a rotating basis. For most of my life I had entertained dreams of becoming an artist. As a child I took art classes every summer and ate up all of the drawing and painting classes available in high school. Later, when inspiration and ambition momentarily grabbed hold of me every six months or so, I would tenuously pick up a pencil or paint brush and try to remember my previous lessons and mistakes I’d overcome a dozen times before. But still, art never drew me like I felt it should, and remained a constant footnote to my ever changing list of hobbies.
Then one day at the start of a meandering trip in a small sailboat up the coast of Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska, everything changed in an instant. I forgot to bring both my phone and camera on a hike, and couldn’t photograph the layered views of Mt. Baker and the lighthouse looking out to Canada that I desperately wanted to remember. But I had a pen and a notebook, so with much trepidation I sketched them both hurriedly from life. The drawings were by no means good, but they were enough to conjure the image of those places in my mind. More importantly, the experience of drawing from life in one sitting with no reference photos, out in the sun with birds flitting by and people walking past, was electrifying. It was so shockingly and totally different from my previous excursions into the world of art, hunched over a desk, zooming in on a glowing photo of some place I’d once been, shifting to and fro so the harsh shadows cast by the fluorescent ceiling lights wouldn’t interfere with my work.
The obsession that ensued was everything that I had dreamed of: I could see improvement in every drawing, and on days where I didn’t draw I felt incomplete. My journey as an artist is still ongoing, and in the way that all good journeys are, will never be finished. Sketching the world around me has become a way to document my life and notice the beauty in the everyday things we take for granted. It is a new way to look at the world, a meditation, and a philosophy of life, for lack of less pretentious words.
I run all of the operations at Shade Field Art. Every picture is drawn on location by me, and I package and ship all the orders myself. I'm constantly making new drawings of wherever I am in the world, and adding them as postcards and prints you can buy. So, check back often. or subscribe to the newsletter if you want behind the scenes stories of the drawings and the most up to date news! Thanks for supporting independent art!
- Eliot