In the early years, my heart belonged to the Impressionists with all the swirling colors and textural brushwork. They inspired the broken color pastel landscapes I experimented with during high school.

Four Trees – pastel – 1983 – my junior year of high school by Bill Inman
Color! The world is a beautifully colorful place. Even in high school, I worked at getting every bit of color I could imagine to weave and mingle among shimmering trees and cascading skies.

Rocks, Water Trees – Pastel – 1984 – Senior year of high school by Bill Inman
In the landscape pastel painting below of hills and clouds, I used distinct lines of color to create motion and energy.

Hills – Pastel – 1983 – Created during my sophomore year of high school. Signed Bill I.
Color theory was not part of the high school curricula. Seeing works by the Impressionists in my Dad’s books inspired my choices. After that, I followed my instincts and played and experimented – a lot!

Trees & Lake – Pastel – around 1982 – my sophomore year of high school
I wanted to see how one color placed next to another would affect those individual colors. Would they clash or become best friends – maybe both. How would that same combination of pigments change the feeling in the painting? How far could I stretch the color boundaries before the limits of my fascination failed or I felt I had gone too far?
High School art classes with Norma Sharma introduced me to charcoal, clay, block prints, watercolor – a multitude of media. Watercolor came in a close second to pastel, but the large set of Rembrandt pastels my parents gave me for Christmas was tough competition.
That is until I started taking advanced watercolor classes in college. That led me to experiment with both watercolor and pastel separately and then in combination.
I played with softer edges.

Soft Edges – Watercolor – around 1989 – by Bill Inman
And with harder edges.

Hard Edges – Watercolor – around 1989 – by Bill Inman
And then I combined the hard and soft edges and experimented with opaque watercolor.

Combination Edges – Watercolor – 1989 – by Bill Inman
The bright colors and sharper edges that I could achieve with watercolor were a wonderful foundation that led me to experiment with pastel over the washes to add textural qualities I wasn’t getting with watercolor alone.

Pastel over Watercolor – 1989 – by Bill Inman (yeah, I know, crazy color – it sure was fun to paint though)
I used not only pastels but stiff bristle brushes, salt, scrapers, gauche, and a host of other tools and ideas to see how far I could push watercolor’s potential. Below was a transparent watercolor painting called Summer Retreat finished in 1989. I used scraper tools to create highlights, tree trunks, and branches.
Even goauche was thrown into the mix. Those spots near the swan’s head show the fragile nature of water-soluble media. This painting got damaged years later when our washer broke and flooded our basement where I was storing my high school and college work. I’m just grateful it only got splashed a little.

Swans – goauche over watercolor – 1989 – by Bill Inman (water spots are courtesy of an overflowing washing machine that damaged much of my stored college work)
Even when realism reigned during my illustration classes, imagination was still critical.
Below was an illustration assignment using transparent watercolor. I don’t remember the exact objective but when I saw the reference image I thought of a Maalox Moment. Throwing in a colorful fish head instead of bread to create his sandwich was just for fun. I was hoping to increase the humor of the painting and the engagement of the viewer. No, it was not a portrait of Donald Trump.
Experimenting with media, tools, and ideas ensures that our art never gets stale for us or our viewers.

Maalox Moment – watercolor – 1989 – by Bill Inman
My professors also taught the importance of shapes, line, and movement. In the Conte crayon drawings below the objective of the assignment was to use value and overlap to create the illusion of depth and suggest spatial placement – even when the shapes were visually flat.

Shapes – Conte Crayon – 1986 – by Bill Inman

Escher Inspired – Conte – 1986 – by Bill Inman
Negative and positive shape relationships were emphasized – not focusing on objects, but the spaces around and within objects. We were taught to make each shape interesting irrespective of perceived reality – to see more with our imagination than with our eyes.

Swan – Ink – 1989 – by Bill Inman
That’s how Child’s Play below came to be – pure imagination. We sprayed several colors of paint on top of the water that filled up a 50-gallon trash can, swirled it around a bit like witches’ brew, and dipped illustration board quickly, straight down into the mix and back out again.

Child’s Play – Spray Paint and Oil Paint – 1989 – by Bill Inman
Repelled by the water, the paint stuck to the board in a beautiful spiraling display. We were told to glue magazine clippings on top of the spray paint to fashion a story from the medley. Oil paint proved much more compelling and fun for me than magazine clippings to finish off this dream of castles and boats and childlike wonder.
Illustration and color theory classes encouraged increased innovation and created potential paths for experimentation. Below are three examples: A Night Out; 1 Red, Yellow & Blue Marker; and The Savior’s Life.

Night Out – Oil on Primed Paper – 1989 – by Bill Inman
The painting above was created with oil paint on primed paper. It was all about exploring the effects of city lights at night.

1 Red, Yellow & Blue Marker were used to create a Pointillism inspired optical blending – 1985 – by Bill Inman
1 Red, Yellow & Blue Marker were used above to create a Pointillism inspired optical blending of the sidelines at a football game. I did this in 1985 while attending the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.
The shadow box below was a collage assignment. I chose to depict significant moments in the Savior’s life using magazine images, colored pencils, eggshells, and paint tube lids.

The Savior’s Life Cycle – Collage – 1989 – by Bill Inman
Exploring new materials and techniques can help our oil paintings continue to evolve and transform. Experimentation keeps us open to the quiet whisperings of insight and inspiration that trickle into our thoughts while we work – or perhaps while studying the work of others even in fields seemingly unrelated to our own.
My first full oil landscape attempt was motivated by the small dabs of color that I saw in the work of the impressionists I so admired.

My first full oil painting – 1985 – by Bill Inman
A dozen of Sergei Bongart’s paintings, on view in a room of our school’s art department, electrified my passion for oil painting. The brush strokes were much more pronounced and broad than the French Impressionists’ and the vigorous approach appealed to me more than anything I had yet experienced.

Back Porch – Oil Painting by Sergei Bongart – http://www.byui.edu/spori-gallery/past-exhibits/sergei-bongart-a-masters-brush
The early ’90s for me were full of plein air painting with a Russian Impressionist influence. I had a lot of fun with vigorous decisive brushstrokes and bright colors.

Garden – 12×16 – 1992 – oil painting by Bill Inman

River – 20×30 – 1991 – oil painting by Bill Inman
The painting below was created during a plein air painting excursion with Luke Frazier. We were both attending Utah State University. He was a sculptor at the time who began to dabble in painting. He stopped dabbling and became one of the top wildlife artists in the United States.

Logan Canyon Fall – 20×24 – 1990 – plein air oil painting by Bill Inman

Bigfork Montana Dock – 20×30 – 1992 – oil painting by Bill Inman
Fast bold painting was a lot of fun. But then something began to change – not all at once, but by degrees. First, my work got thicker and thicker – sort of Van Goghish.

Lilly Pond, 24×30, 1993. An oil painting by Bill Inman using thick textural paint.

Sangre De Christos, 40×30, 1995. An oil painting by Bill Inman

Van Gogh Waterlilies, 20×30, 1996. An oil painting by Bill Inman

Ascending – 30×24 – 1996 – oil painting by Bill Inman

Thick Blue Flowers – 1997 – oil painting by Bill Inman
Then near the end of the 90s, a desire for emotive realism crept in and took charge of my brush. I continued to use thicker paint, but my brushstrokes and color harmonies evolved towards realism – a little bit at least.

Reflections – 30×40 – 1996 – oil painting by Bill Inman

Sunset Pond – 24×30 – 1996 – oil painting by Bill Inman
I played back and forth between greater realism and a fanciful approach to color. I was in search of something and kept pushing new directions and ideas.

Vibrance – Greenhorn Valley, Colorado, 40×40, 1998. An oil painting by Bill Inman

Painted Plein Air – River Valley, 1994. An oil painting by Bill Inman

Red Flowers – 1996 – oil painting by Bill Inman
Looking back, I can clearly see the influence of each of my early experiments and choices guiding my art with a healthy helping of increased knowledge and skill adding richness and dimension. Sometimes I wonder if I get too caught up in the present and forget lessons of the past or become timid from the pressures of life’s demands.
This painting I completed in 2000 of aspen trees titled Twilight Tango was a big spark that took me more firmly toward an increased natural realism in my paintings.

Twilight Tango, 30×50, 2000 – oil painting by Bill Inman
My work has gone through many evolutions – some were more like distortions while others have gracefully contributed to my ongoing quest.
I continue to experiment, just not at the pace I kept the first two decades.
This last Fall, while pondering the start of a fall mountain forest piece, I wondered if I could approach it differently. What could I do that I had not tried before?
I’m not sure what put the thought into my mind, but I decided to load up the top half of the 20×24 panel with straight white paint. I then worked right into that paint with all the vibrant colors of fall and the twisting twining twigs and branches and life of the forest. I think I just felt the need for some texture. Mountain Mists was the result.

Misty Mountain – 20×24 – 2016 – oil painting by Bill Inman
The experience was so fun and invigorating I thought the Master Oil Painting community would enjoy it as well which is why we added the video to our Membership library. The entire process from start to finish is there.
What are some of your transformational experiences as an artist? What experiments or happy accidents have given you some ‘ah-hah’ moments?
If you enjoyed this journey please share it with others so they can find it as well.
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So fascinating…love the evolution of your work!!
Thank you, thank you. Your pictorial journey has inspired me and reminded me that playing is the path…and that no painting I do is a failure if it teaches me something.
Wow, what a transformation! The one thing that hasn’t changed is your love for vibrant colors.
Thanks David for all of your hard work in producing and compiling this blog. Wonderful trip through your history Bill. I enjoyed the changes and challenges that you shared with us. I see the accumulation of your early styles and methods in your artwork today. Well done!!
Great piece and inspiring as we hit our various walls! I love the evolution and the switchbacks.
Loved seeing your experimental works leading up to the present. Especially loved your watercolors.
Thank you for sharing your talent there is so much to learn, colors are radiant love all paintings.
Thanks for sharing your history with us. It’s encouraging to know the joy is in the journey and no experience is ever wasted! Appreciate David’s help also.
Thank you to both of you! What a fascinating journey!
Sharing your painting-journey with us is wonderful. Thank you so much.
It is very inspiring.
It is so helpful to see painting style evolve or blend. That was just great!
Bill, I started following you on facebook and you website about 6 months ago. Now look for your work at the Indiana aheritage Art and Hoosier Salon. Thanks for showing how your work evolved over your liftime, It is always interest to see how an artist progresses over time.
Seeing your early work reminds me that I can continue to grow and improve. And it is a better lesson for seeing than if you just wrote the words. Thank you!
Enjoyed the progression of your paintings.
Thank You Bill, That was good to see. What I take from it is that I should be experimenting and be playful about it….Less stressing and more exploring . What does it matter where the process takes it ? Chances are good that it could turn out just fine
An enjoyable read, interesting to see the progression in style using different mediums. Please note gauche=left; I assume gouache was the medium.
Hah, thank you Diane! I think I’ve been misspelling that for a while now. Thanks for setting me straight.
Amazing transformation in your work. I saved some of my early pieces and I’m glad. You are an Inspiration to me. I m starting to realize that every painting is a learning experience. Also you’ve taught me not to give up. Thank you. I thank God for showing me to your website. Nancy
Wow, thank you Nancy for those generous comments. That really lifted my spirits!
This is an outstanding pictorial history of your painting journey, Bill. Very inspirational for those of us who are back at the beginning. Telling us to keep moving forward, keep experimenting and don’t stop painting. Thank you.
Great to hear Wayne, thank you! One of the miracles of being an artist is the ability to look back and see tangible results from our efforts over the years.
I love colour and your “Misty Mountain” did it for me.
Thank you Laurel – Misty Mountain is one of my favorites. It was very fun to paint!
Gracias una EXPERIENCIA ALUCINANTE, que se disfruta con emociòn que produce el colorido brillante lleno de luz y los contrastes que dan fuerza expresiva y vitalidad, emociona e inspira. saludos
¡Gracias Guido!
Great article Bill. Thanks for sharing your journey, very inspiring.
Enjoyed the journey. Color has always grabbed my attention. There is nothing there, that would not hang on my wall.
Thank you for opening up your art journey to us. It’s inspiring and a good reminder to not to let oneself get stuck in one approach. I began my journey in 2006 (although always loved art, art history, and drew for my kids a lot). I’ve kept some pieces that I recently took a look at. Fun to see the progress made, and now retired, am focusing more attention on carrying forward ideas and learning as much as I can with every painting!