Painter David Hunt shares an expressive collection of landscapes and seascapes inspired by world travel. View more of his portfolio on his website.
My early years were visually inspired by living in the Philippines and traveling to Japan, China and the Pacific Islands. Every two years we traveled back to Washington state to visit family. I found myself also inspired by the Olympic Peninsula and the rugged coast of the Northwest.
A move to coastal New England provided another visual perspective, including summers spent working on a charter sailboat along the Eastern Seaboard and the Caribbean Islands.
I began sketching my experiences at a very early age and started to realize that my language was a visual language. My parents encouraged my artwork. The refrigerator door was always covered in drawings. Christmas brought a Jon Gnagy “Learn to Draw” set and I was hooked!
A move to Cincinnati brought me to the College of Design, Art and Architecture at the University of Cincinnati. I majored in product design with extensive painting and art history studies. I was in my element.
After graduation, I joined a product design consultancy and was an adjunct Instructor at the University for several years. My days were filled with sketching and drawing, designing products for industry and teaching young students the basics of a visual vocabulary.
Retirement brought the opportunity to focus my creative energies on painting and to be inspired by travel on a motorcycle through the Carolina mountains, to the Pacific Northwest and New England and cruising the Rhine River.
Having been trained in oil, watercolor and gouache, I discovered acrylic and now work exclusively in that medium. This allows a flexibility that lends itself to the styles and sizes I’ve adopted—everything from realism to a more colorful impressionism.
Landscapes and seascapes are my main subjects with a portrait here and there thrown in for good measure. I paint on stretched canvas and cradled art board in small to medium sizes. Acrylic allows me to produce quick results with an underpainting ready for details with no lost time for drying.
My palette consists of thin, semitransparent colors which allow me to achieve saturated color and depth by layers applied one over the other. I mix colors and thinning medium in 2 ounce glass jars, producing a palette of infinite hue and tint variations. I waste very little paint with this method and I always can mix a new variation.
Being a visual person, I take great pleasure looking at my palette of 100 or more bottles of color!
Artist David Hunt invites you to follow him on Instagram and Facebook.
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