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Hmmm, what an interesting thread. I just joined the forum and I'm still exploring all the sections. This topic struck me because I'm one of the minority who is a portrait and landscape painter, but not a still life painter.
I don't like to keep doing the same thing over and over again. I hate routines. For me, going back and forth between portraits and landscapes is refreshing, liberating, and joyful. Portraits take a lot more concentration and focus, especially when one is getting the likeness just right. So after all that intensity I just have to break out and do an expansive, fun painting. I enjoy painting land forms, water, trees, architecture, clouds, the works. I've been flying in helicopters and single-engine planes to take reference photos for very large (36 x 64 sometimes) aerial views of the Philadelphia cityscape and landscapes of the Maine coast and islands. Painting these aerial views keeps me busy all winter. Between the portraits, of course!
As for still life, I realized that I often incorporate still life into portraits. In fact, I get fired up about painting flowers or porcelain or glass or whatever when it is part of a composition. It's just that I, personally, find painting just a still life boring. No offense to the majority here who do enjoy it. I love looking at still life paintings, I just don't like to paint them.
Thanks to the person who started this topic. I never stopped to think about it before.
Alex
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