Painting Adventures with Mike Simpson

“Using watercolors for their transparency and loose suggestive qualities or oil paints for their opacity, texture and quality of brush stroke, I paint the people, places and things of small town, rural America. From the towering peaks of the Rocky Mountains, to the towering grain silos of Kansas or the small adobe casas of New Mexico, to the fishing boats in a marina on the Northern California coast, the cowboys of Montana, the bewhiskered bikers of Sturgis or the girls on the corner in Winslow, Arizona, they all have a story.
    With my painting kit I travel the backroads and by-ways of America, often on my motorcycle, seeking out the character of my subjects and capture it using the effect of light, shadow, shape and value.”