Wess Foreman, artist

Sometimes you work long and hard at something your whole life only to be surprised that you enjoy it and you’re actually good at it. So it was with myself.

I’ve always taken an interest in the creative process, have taken many an art class, have gleaned whatever knowledge I could from teachers and professors, and have whiled away the evenings in my room or studio studying a photograph or still life, trying to recreate it on canvas or drawing pad. Not to fulfill some lofty goal of becoming a great artist but simply because I enjoyed it.

Now I have returned to that first love, the creative process, with an eye toward (what else) becoming a great artist. There is always room to learn and grow and better oneself: I think as long as you love what you do, this holds true. My business card now reads: Wess Foreman, artist.

I was born and raised in the great state of Louisiana, where I still live and paint today. I grew up the oldest of five sons of a United Methodist minister [which means we moved around alot].

I graduated high school in 1992; attended Louisiana Tech University where I was active in The Wesley Foundation [not just because of the name]; I married my wonderful wife, Tammy, in 1997; and we moved to Bogalusa, Louisiana, in 2000, where we reside today with our dogs, Blue and Molly; our cats, Callie, Sam and Slater; and our fish [tinfoil barbs].

A couple of years ago [as I was pondering "what I wanted to be when I grow up"], I decided to drag out my old paints again, just for fun. That’s when I knew what I wanted to be — what I was created to be. An artist.

about my website

I thought I’d say a thing or two about my website for anyone interested (I’ve been questioned about it several times, actually . . . and this is what I told them). I started playing around with html when Geocities came on the scene (before Yahoo! bought them and before the web turned 2.0). Html, for those who don’t know is a mark up language used to format websites - it tells the browser what should appear bold or in italics and control the links on websites . . . you get the idea. These are specially formated text files that can be created using a complicated WYSIWYG editor or using just a basic notepad type program.

Long story short: I hand-coded in notepad most of my revisions of my websites from scratch (or from open source templates), incorporating css along the way to make it a little more flexible. I first started my blog on Blogger.com, I believe, and then switched to using a Wordpress installation on my own server. Anyway, with this latest revision of my website (version 2.0, I’m brilliantly calling it) I’ve switched to an open source content management system called Drupal with which I am quite impressed.

As far as my suggestions for anyone looking for creating a blog: definitely check out Blogger.com - it has many templates to choose from and a powerful but friendly user interface - and Wordpress has become one of the top blogging software out there - outstanding. I would also recommend Drupal as a complete website management system (includes a blog and comment form, etcetera, as well as many templates to choose from). Hope this proves interesting to someone out there. Cheers!