Jimmy Bell's Page

I always found that when I had a set idea as to what I wanted to create, the fun of creating went away and was replaced by frustration. Often, it would end in an unfinished piece and me wondering what went wrong. My direction of a piece would change as I worked on it and it would throw everything off.

Sometimes out of my frustration, I would smear the piece with colors, then as it lay off to the side, something would catch my eye. An image began to pop out at me. A few strokes later, what was to be another doomed piece became an amazing piece. If I hadn’t done what I did to get to that point, those pieces wouldn’t have came to life.

I realized that this is how I need to work. The spontaneity made work interesting again. I didn’t have to worry about straying from the path I laid down for the piece because there was no path to begin with. Just let my mind take over and begin to let things take shape. This keeps every piece I do interesting and different from the next.

I am able to put any medium through that “funnel” and come up with something different every time. I mainly work with scribble, splattered color, or wood grain to begin my pieces. I will use pen, ink, acrylic, or marker for a piece, deciding after the image is found how best to bring it out. This could range from minimal work, leaving most of the original colors, to completely covering the original strokes with a fully painted image.

My work is unique in that each is one of a kind. I wouldn’t be able to reproduce what I do even if I tried. It’s the combination of improvisation and skill that result in each piece. The images are made from my subconscious and whatever medium I’m working with at that time, feeding off each other till the end result is finally realized.