Wilson Cady Acrylic Paintings

About Wilson Cady

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I had an artistic mother and loved to do artwork as a school kid but had only found time to do a couple of small and quick paintings after graduating from high school. “Building a home, family, working, birding and environmental projects had kept me too busy to spend much time on art.  So, until retiring in 2008 from Georgia Pacific, my main artistic outlet was creating flip charts for training classes and illustrating the logbooks on the job.

 

“Sandhill Crane Over Steigerwald” was my first painting Cady completed after retiring, having not painted in more than twenty years. I had some brushes and tubes of paint that I had bought when Nixon was president and purchased a stretched canvas and just started relearning how to paint.  “I had spent a lot of time at Steigerwald Lake and love the views from there.  I wanted to paint what I know so I choose it for the setting. I hade spent the first two weeks after retiring birding in southeast Oregon and had shot a series of photographs of Sandhill Cranes, so decided to use that species in the painting with the photos used as a reference.

 

I paint for myself during the winter when I am less distracted by the world outdoors. Each painting takes from 300 to 700 hours to complete so I only finish one or two paintings per year. I find the application of paint to canvas to be like meditation, some people fill the long winter nights playing on their lap-tops or watching television, I dab paint. I have only done one painting on commission and have never sold any of my works but am starting to have some scanned so that I can offer prints to people who might like one.

 

Nearly all of my paintings have been of local spots that I love in Clark County and the Columbia River Gorge. In my paintings I try to capture those moments and the local views that fill me with awe, so that I can share them with other. Hopefully my paintings will draw the viewer into the scene and spark a desire to explore these sites in person. As I am still learning to use new materials and techniques with each painting my work and style is still evolving.