The Artist

I was smitten by their beauty. Tiny purple flowers growing along the river bank. They popped up every Spring, and every Spring they stirred my heart anew.
I remember painting as a teen, smell of linseed oil, breathless thrill of making chipmunks appear on a canvas, thinking it was 10pm when it was closer to 2am. I was hooked.


They told me “You can’t make a living as an artist,” but after my first year as a reluctant business major, I decided to prove them wrong, or die trying. So I switched majors. Not long out of college I started a sign shop and graphic design/illustration studio. It’s amazing what you can do when you don’t know what you’re doing. I did my first mural at age 20, and over the next two decades I painted murals in Canada, Mexico, Africa, the Middle East and all over the United States.


In January of 2018 I stepped out of my role as a pastor and answered the invitation I heard from those tiny purple flowers: capture on canvas the beauty that stirs my heart awake, and share it with the world. That’s what I do now; through paintings, workshops, videos, murals and house portraits. And I love to write about what I am learning as an artist.


Thanks for taking the time to visit my website. I hope the beauty speaks to you as it spoke to me. I am smitten by the beauty of the One who created this big, amazing world. Nature is His art, and, as art always does, it reveals something of the nature of the artist. I think we all inherited His love for beauty.

Artist Statement

Farley’s work reflects the passion of one who maintains his childlike wonder at this big, beautiful world. As a plein air painter he has grown from obscurity to national recognition over the past seven years. Since entering his first plein air competition in 2018, he has won a number of awards, including ten Best of Shows and eight Artists Choice awards, and has been written up by Plein Air Magazine and other publications.


“I enjoy capturing the interaction of mankind and nature, the hard edges of architecture against the organic shapes of nature. Like the early Impressionists, I set out not to paint the objects in front of me, but the light illuminating them. I believe beauty is timeless and powerful, and when I capture the beauty I see in nature, I’m able to invite others into the experience.”