Innocence of Youth

Welcome! My name is Chuck Underwood. I am a freelance photographer and an artist who primarily works in the digital art medium. Here are a few words about myself and what this website is all about. "If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is - infinite". -from William Blake's poem: the Marriage of Heavan and Hell. I have always been taken by this quote which I first came upon while reading the book "The Doors of Perception" by Aldous Huxley. To me it speaks volumes about our human existence and our seemingly unquenchable thirst for a spiritual connection to our amazing world and universe. It has often been said that creating art can take the artist into a higher level of consciousness in which he/she becomes "one" with the process of creativity - thus allowing the natural forgetting or losing of one's ego consciousness for a certain period of time. It's exhilarating that feeling of timelessness - one of being a part of the infinite and eternal - the "un-nameable" whole that I think drives - maybe subconsciously for some - a great deal of the artists' passion and creative force. The bulk of my artworks I have created throughout my life are often described as serene, calming and soothing landscapes and nature pieces. They are my humble attempts to accentuate or "bring out" the "infinite" nature of ourselves and our world (which we all too often overlook in our rush-about, harried day to day lives). A wise Person (Pema Chodron) said: "You are the Sky. Everything else - it's just the weather". From a very early age Art and Photography have been avid passions of mine. (Love of music and playing my guitar come in at a close third). I love traveling and discovering natural landscapes or nature scenes that evoke an emotional response in me. For me photography and art are intertwined - two different kinds of personal expression that when combined can create a magical kind of metamorphosis in the forms of line, shape, shadow, light, color. Digital Paintings Having a strong interest in art from an early age, I learned to paint on stretched canvas in my late teens and fell in love with painting. In recent years I have become fascinated with the the new, constantly evolving digital painting techniques that involve the use of a computer, a digital painting software program (I use Corel Painter 2016), and a an electronic drawing tablet and art pen which allows me to "hand paint" with my computer screen as my "canvas". You will see some of my own digital landscape paintings here, as well as some of my commissioned portrait paintings which I hand - paint using a client's own photograph as a reference. (If you live near me in Austin, Texas and you don't have any good quality photos of your own to give me for a reference photo, your're in luck! I can come to your home or meet you in a local park and take some creative photos of your pet for you - (there is an additional fee for this). You will be able to purchase prints of any of those photos in addition to the painting I will create for you. Thanks for looking! - Chuck “The richness I achieve comes from nature, the source of my inspiration. ” ? Artist Claude Monet