My father painted barns. Dozens of them, plus the quiet corners of Hilton Head Island that never make the postcards. I grew up wanting to paint and draw the way he did. He's gone now, but I still paint the things he would have stopped to notice.

​

I travel with a sketchbook. It comes out anywhere I can find a seat and an hour. Watercolor mostly. Oil, gouache, and charcoal when the time allows for it, an iPad when paint isn't practical. A painting takes longer than a photograph, and that's the point. The place will still be there next year. The hour I spent looking at it won't.

 

Some of what comes home is good. Some of it isn't, and it stays in the sketchbook. The decent ones end up here.

 

Kyle Strickland