Haunted Halloween Art Prints of Lewis Barrett Lehrman

A few words, maybe more, from "The Painter of Dark," Lewis Barrett Lehrman

    I'm Lewis Barrett Lehrman, veteran graphic artist and illustrator, professional watercolorist, teacher of watercolor and artistic journaling at the Scottsdale (AZ) Artists' School and elsewhere, and author of six books on art for artists. For three years, I served as founding American Editor for International Artist Magazine and helped to launch the publication. These days, however, you'll find me in my studio most of the time, working on spooky commissioned paintings, as well as new subjects for The Haunted Studio.

    My career as a fine artist began back in 1984, following over twenty-five years in graphic design and illustration, and I've been painting and writing pretty much full time ever since. The Haunted Studio has been my baby for the last seven or eight years, and I've built its spooky collection from just a few paintings and prints, to its present -- and still growing -- gallery of subjects. Will I ever run out of ideas? Never! I've got so many backed up in my head and CLAMORING to get out, I'll never get to do them all!

    How did I become interested in painting the haunted world? I trace it back to the summer of 1944, the year I turned eleven! That was when my aunt and uncle invited me to spend a month with them on a mid-western farm. I was a New York city kid, a budding artist even then, and to say I was excited at making the trip -- by myself!! -- on an overnight Pullman sleeper train to Battle Creek, Michigan, would be understating my feelings by quite a bit. Sleepless with excitement, I spent that night, nose pressed to the window, gazing out at moonlit farmlands, lonely houses lit by solitary lights, as we rolled past in the darkness. They're images I remember to this day, so it was only natural that I'd be drawn to painting the night. From painting the night it was a short hop to Halloween.

    Through the mid '80's and into the early '90's, my wife and I owned an art gallery which featured my work as well as that of other artists. Night scenes -- and then Halloween scenes -- were always popular subjects. The more I painted them, the more they sold. And people loved them! Today, many of them live on mainly in memory, as they have long since left my world.

    Those were the years before the Internet, high quality scanning and digital giclée (high quality ink-jet) printing, and all the technology which we take for granted today, all of which have now made it possible to produce incredibly faithful reproductions in small quantities, and which also helped make The Haunted Studio possible.

    These days, The Haunted Studio and its activities occupy a great deal of my creative time. I have come to think of myself as "Painter of Dark."

    Thanks to the wonders of digital printing, I control every step of the reproduction of my paintings, from scanning through retouching, adjusting, tweaking, and watching each and every sheet as it inches from the giclée printer. With the exception of the Premiere Limited Edition series, I do everything in house, guaranteeing that each print is completely faithful to my painting. The results I'm able to achieve with today's state-of-the-art equipment, combined with finicky perfectionism, are simply amazing!

    Want to see more? Additional spooky subjects are gestating even as you read this! Stay tuned!

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