Featured Artist Colin Silverman

Artist Colin Silverman combines traditional and digital mediums to create compelling portraits of celebrities and other personalities. Find more of his work by visiting his website.

 

 

Art has always been an important part of the lives of the women on my mom’s side of the family, My grandmother, mother, aunt and sister all do painting, needlework, weaving, mosaics or some other form of artistic expression.

 

 

As a boy, I loved cartooning and wore out my copy of Jack Hamm’s Cartooning, The Head and Figure. At the ripe age of eleven, I won a countywide art contest to redesign our county’s seal and I began to dream of becoming an artist by trade.

 

 

In college I continued to draw in pencil and charcoal. I also tried my hand at painting, photography and silk-screening. While there, I had two experiences that gave me a voice and a direction. The first was from an art professor named Guy Williams, who forced me to loosen up by doing twenty-minute gesture paintings of nude models.

 

 

The fluidity and joy of this practice helped me find my artistic voice and fall in love with the human form, which became the focal point for my fine art. The second life-changing experience was the college’s first computer art class, which introduced me to a new and powerful medium.

 

 

After college and a brief stint as a graphic designer, I became an artist and animator in the video game industry. All the while I was pursuing my fine art at a local junior college at night. After eight years of sitting in front of a computer, however, I decided to make a career change.

 

 

My parents had always been philanthropic, and I liked the idea of making a difference in the world, so I chose to go into the healing arts and became an Orthopedic Massage Therapist. My love of the human form and anatomy served me well, and I’ve spent the last twenty-six years working in my private practice center.

 

 

Like others, Covid-19 brought my career to a screeching halt for almost a year, and allowed me to re-examine my life a bit. I realized that my unfulfilled artistic vision was a big part of who I am and was just waiting to be reclaimed and expressed. I found my way back to myself; first through ballpoint pen art and then through digital art once again.

 

 

I’ve always loved classic portrait drawing and painting as well as urban street art. My challenge has been to explore these different aesthetics as well as working to combine traditional and digital mediums.

 

 

As a way to tell a deeper story about the people I draw and paint, I often use layers of images, music, lyrics, writings and anything else that seems pertinent to the story.

 

 

I am inspired to paint interesting people from everyday life as well as famous icons who give shape, texture, meaning and understanding to the world around us.

 

Artist Colin Silverman invites you to follow him on Facebook and Instagram.

 

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