Transitioning from Photography to Painting (By Christopher Pursley)

Around 2010, I decided to purchase a digital camera. This welcomed in the digital age into my life. I had spent so many years using a film camera where I was very versed in exposure and composition, but I found the digital aspect to be actually refreshing because you could look at it instantly. Also, I began to familiarize myself with different software such as Adobe Photoshop, which made crazy manipulations of photographs, interesting and extremely fun.

During the learning period after getting my first digital camera I mostly found my creative expression to be in close up abstract photography. I took pictures of just about anything that seemed interesting in composition and color. In 2016, I was given a grant by the York County, South Carolina Arts Council to do a photography exhibit at Gallery 120 in Clover, South Carolina. I was the featured artist at the gallery that month. I did a total of nine large prints, which were much more difficult than I would’ve ever imagined. I was able to showcase more photographs in the years that followed, but, again, I was itching for something more.

In 2019, my painting career began almost accidentally. I had always enjoyed viewing abstract, art, and galleries and museums, but never really took seriously that I could be an abstract artist. During most of my professional career, I have been in the remodeling industry, specializing in cabinetry design and installation, this also was a creative outlet for me.  On this day in 2019, I was installing a kitchen in an art gallery in Charlotte, North Carolina, which is owned by a fairly well-known abstract artist. After a few conversations, she convinced me to buy some paint and some small canvases and just begin painting—see where it took me. So the next day, I went to the store and bought some inexpensive paints and small canvasses.

My first painting was really bad, and I was thinking that I just didn’t have it in me to paint like I wanted to.  I lost interest for a short time, but I have come to realize since then that anything that is important should be continued no matter what things look like at the present moment.

During the winter of that same year, when I was cleaning up some clutter in the office, I noticed that I still had a stack of old glass from my photography exhibit just sitting around. At that moment, I had a spark of an idea—Could I paint on glass? It seemed more interesting than a canvas, so I decided to once again pick up my paints and try my hand at abstracts once again.

I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t even know how well the paint was going to stick to the glass itself, but after some experimentation, I found that it adhered to the glass very well. My painting career was born! My mind tends to work differently, and the act of creating paintings directly on glass means I have to start with the foreground and work towards the background of a painting. I started experimenting with shapes, cutting in color and form, until eventually I could manipulate these creations into whatever my mind imagined. When you see these creations on my website, please know that they are made with great care and contemplation. You may see something in them that others do not. Don’t let that stop you. Art has always been very personal to the observer, as well as the artist. I hope you get the joy from my work that I get from creating each piece.

“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” ~Aristotle~