It all started with an orchid. After a successful career as a scientist, Dave Middleton retired some twenty years ago and began to grow orchids with his wife. The delicate flowers inspired him to take an art class to learn how to draw the beautiful blooms. He was quickly hooked on drawing, and, as he developed essential tremors that made his hands shake, Middleton learned not just to overcome his tremors – he used them to his advantage, creating a style unique to him.
“They call it essential tremors. Many times, I don’t think they are quite essential,” Middleton jokes. “So my hands shake. Picking drawing, where you’re working with lines as a medium is crazy. But I find in working small—I rarely work larger than 7” by 10”. Working small, I can let my hand almost quiver and shake to get those expressive lines. I rotate the page and I get cross-hatching.”
Middleton began his art career, after retiring, with a class at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts.
“It has only been during the last 20 years or so that I have found the artist within me,” he says. “I thought a workshop taught by Kalamazoo artist Helen Klezynski on drawing flowers in colored pencil would be interesting. It opened a new world for me, and I have continued working with Helen since then as a student and assistant in her Vicksburg studio.”
Middleton now keeps a studio at the Ninth Wave Studio in Kalamazoo. He tries to maintain a daily discipline of drawing, at home or at the studio or plein air. His favorite mediums are monochromatic, charcoal, ink or graphite.
“I am compelled by light and dark patterns in life,” Middleton says. “Everywhere I look, shadows from an object’s edge pull at me to explore, look deeper. I am often drawn to intimate forest paths and trees in meadows but don’t hesitate to explore man’s involvement in these scenes. I spend a great deal of time working on studies from life and from photographs, working out compositional and different value zones because I cannot remove black from white paper and find the white again. These studies continue until I learn the turn of a branch or the look in the eyes of my subject and how to proceed. The greatest challenge then is to stay out of my own way and let the artist and subject become the drawing.”
