A few words, maybe more, from "The Painter of Dark," Lewis Barrett Lehrman
 I'm Lewis Barrett Lehrman, veteran graphic artist and
illustrator, professional watercolorist, teacher of watercolor and
artistic journaling at the Scottsdale (AZ) Artists' School and elsewhere,
and author of six books on art for artists. For three years, I served as
founding American Editor for International Artist Magazine
and helped to launch the publication. These
days, however, you'll find me in my studio most of the time, working on
spooky commissioned paintings, as well as new subjects for The Haunted Studio.
My career as a fine artist began back in 1984,
following over twenty-five years in graphic design and illustration, and
I've been painting and writing pretty much full time ever since. The
Haunted Studio has been my baby for the last eight or nine years, and
I've built its spooky collection from just a few paintings and prints, to
its present -- and still growing -- gallery of subjects. Will I ever run
out of ideas? Never! I've got so many backed up in my head and CLAMORING
to get out, I'll never get to do them all!
How did I become interested in painting the haunted
world? I trace it back to the summer of 1944, the year I turned eleven!
That was when my aunt and uncle invited me to spend a month with them on a
mid-western farm. I was a New York city kid, a budding artist even then,
and to say I was excited at making the trip -- by myself!! -- on
an overnight Pullman sleeper train to Battle Creek, Michigan, would be
understating my feelings by quite a bit. Sleepless with excitement, I
spent that night, nose pressed to the window, gazing out at moonlit
farmlands, lonely houses lit by solitary lights, as we rolled past in the
darkness. They're images I remember to this day, so it was only natural
that I'd be drawn to painting the night. From painting the night it was a short hop to
Halloween.
Through the mid '80's and into the early '90's, my wife and I owned an
art gallery which featured my work as well as that of other artists. Night
scenes -- and then Halloween scenes -- were always popular subjects. The
more I painted them, the more they sold. And people loved them! Today,
many of them live on mainly in memory, as they have long since left my
world.
Those were the years before the Internet, high quality scanning and
digital giclée (high quality ink-jet) printing, and all the technology which we take for granted
today, all of which have now made it possible to produce incredibly faithful
reproductions in small quantities, and which thereby helped make The
Haunted Studio possible.
Thanks to the wonders of digital printing, I control
every step of the reproduction of my paintings, from scanning through
retouching, adjusting, tweaking, and watching each and every sheet as it
inches from the giclée printer. With the exception of notecards, and the
Premiere
Limited Edition series, I do everything in house, guaranteeing that each print is
completely faithful to my painting. The results I'm able to achieve with
today's state-of-the-art equipment, combined with finicky
perfectionism, are simply amazing!
Want to see more? Stay in touch here at The
Haunted Studio's website. Additional subjects are gestating even as
you read this. Bookmark my home page, and come back from time to time to
see what's newest and spookiest!
Better still, subscribe to
The Halloweenist, my FREE Haunted Studio
Newsletter, and all the news will come to you.
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