Introductions

I guess I’ll use this first post to introduce myself. My name is Lyall Brownlee, I spend many hours of my life locked in my small home studio under 500 watt halogen work lights, living vicariously through the unicorns and other imaginary creatures that I draw and paint. I believe this habit to be born out of some kind of social retardation, a deep desire to express myself coupled with the juxtaposition of being awkward around people and inept at conversation.
I grew up in the country spending many hours alone, entertaining myself, drawing, catching bugs and banana boarding in the garage. It is probably because of these beginnings that I became so accustomed to ‘me time’ and find it rather difficult to enjoy myself in large groups of humans.
Without alcohol that it is and as most of us may know, alcohol, although we think it does at the time, is not conducive to articulating thoughts into coherent conversation and conducting your self in a socially respectable manner.
Although I do make the effort as an adult to integrate myself into the social network I still haven’t and probably never will master the art of transparency, in many cases I end up coming across as the quiet lurker in the corner or the babbling, drunken buffoon.
So… I withdraw to the studio every chance I get where I have created my own visual language, one that comes out of private contemplation and not jumbled banter, pictorial representations, of my observations and reactions to the world. Imaginary creatures that express what I can’t. I sit in my tiny little space making my own fictional world to illustrate to others how I feel about the one in which I physically exist.