(Detail from: Self Portrait - Me, getting my haircut)
About Scott McClelland
Life is interesting. Here I am creating artwork, which, hopefully, others will find to be appealing, or pleasing to their eyes. I only recently began painting on canvas, using acrylics. As a kid, I was influenced by my mother who liked to paint. I looked at her art books, and understood basic composition, but I never pursued artwork. After I graduated, I worked as a commercial silkscreen printer. I learned color mixing, and matching. I produced some of my own original art prints, and even sold some to retail stores. I also did photography, using that ancient stuff called film. Then I got married, got out of printing production, and got into sales.
As my children grew, and now, my grandchildren, I always enjoyed the family activity of painting on glass Christmas balls with the kids. We used acrylic craft paints, because they dry quickly, and clean-up with water. (Painting with young children requires easy clean-up.) It was a lot of fun, and has proven to be the stuff of some great memories. Some of my most prized possessions are the Christmas balls my children and grandchildren painted.
In short, I dabbled in art, but never seriously.
About 4 Christmas seasons ago, I painted a baby portrait on a Christmas Ball, as a gift for a co-worker. She showed it around, and I began receiving orders from other co-workers. Ever since, during each Christmas season, I'm usually busy from mid-November until the holiday, painting portraits of people, and pets, on Christmas balls. It's very painstaking, detailed work, and I have gotten pretty good at very accurately depicting the subjects. I usually do about three dozen Christmas ball portraits each season. I typically work from a photo that was sent via text.
Many of my customers asked me if I did larger paintings. So, in January 2019, I started doing canvas work. As it turns out, the color mixing skills, and brush work, from years of painting Christmas balls, made for an easy transition to larger formats. The same concept applies, whether on a Christmas Ball or a landscape painting on canvas, and I try to recreate that with my paintings.
Although I didn't realize it, because it happened gradually, I had learned to SEE. I had honed my observational skills.
I am fascinated by the interplay between light and shadows, and how it creates depth. I love the way lighting conditions change throughout the day, throughout the seasons, and with different weather.
What I try to capture with each painting, is the way I view a scene. If I'm doing a portrait, I want to capture the subject actually doing something, not just smiling for a camera-type pose. I don't aim for photo realism, although I'm often told that my paintings looks like a photograph.
I simply render my subjects as I see them, through my own perspective.