You Can't Rush Art

Golden Hour Hunt, 2021
Original, Oil paint on canvas
30 x 30" artwork, framed in a beautiful burgundy frame with gilded gold filigree  accents
Signed: Andrew Lee, lower right
Full-color, original oil painting of a powerful pointer on point amongst the golden sunlight blanketing the south Georgia quail hunt.  

A couple of years ago on a warm Sunday afternoon at the tail end of a Southeastern Wildlife Expo in Charleston, SC, as I recall it I turned to Mike Floyd in the Gray’s Sporting Journal booth where we were set up and said, “well, we’ve got about another hour until we pack up… should I just find something in one of the issues for inspiration and see how far I can get with something?!’

So we flipped through and landed on an Over Under Co. ad that had a particularly striking photo of a pointer bird hunting with the sun pouring through the trees and blanketing the field. I didn’t hesitate. ‘It’ll be for fun’, I thought, ‘I’ll just go as fast as I can and see what happens’.

It got packed up along with everything else, we said our goodbyes and well wishes and we made our way back home to Auburn, Alabama. I had begun to consider it more of a frustration than anything else.

Time marched on as it sat in the corner alongside other half-completed pieces but as an artist I was focusing more and more on works of art in oil as a medium of choice and in late 2020 and early 2021,

Who knows how many sporadic hours I’ve spent on this one over the last few years here and there; it’s probably more than I would guess. But the learning process is interesting like that. Life experiences have to happen in different ways for us to improve and mature. Sometimes you’ll get something right away and it ‘clicks’. Other times, hard lessons can be painful or take a long time with a lot of trial and error for it to sink in. Sometimes, spontaneity and impulse makes for a great work of art. Other times—and more often than not—it’s best to plan out your composition and practice it before you begin to save time and effort. One thing I do know is if you let your anxiety or perfectionism provide you with excuses not to do your best or to learn from your mistakes and push forward, you’ll still have a beginning-of-a-painting collecting dust in the corner of the studio instead of one of your best works framed prominently for others to enjoy and that, my friends, would be a waste of an opportunity.

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