Fullness and emptiness, volume and surface, light and shade – Port Townsend painter Andrew Sheldon captures a sense of place.

He sells his work, done in a style he describes as “sort of a cross between impressionism and realism,” at the Port Townsend Gallery, where he was on the board for four years and now shows as a guest artist, and at the Uptown Pub. A house painter by trade, he fills the slow off-season by painting pictures.

“I don’t take it that seriously,” he said. “I don’t get my ego that involved in it … I’m not really putting that much of myself in it.”

“It seemed like a sane pursuit for me,” he said. “It’s almost like a relaxation or meditation, almost like an old lady sitting in a chair, knitting. It calms my mind, quite literally.”

Mostly self-taught, Sheldon attributes his influences to PT painter Jim Alden, now deceased, and a friend in Washington, D.C., who was dedicated to the craft, who’d take an easel and oil paints “out on the streets of D.C. and really paint paintings.... That’s a direction I want to go.”

“There’s a lot in my technique that would have to change,” he said, were he to paint outside more. “When you’re out there, and you’re actually looking at a scene for more than a couple minutes, the light really starts to dance … it’s kind of stagnant in a photo.”

Sheldon has taken a few classes and likes impressionist painters, “especially Monet. He was out in it, really seeing that vibrating light.”

He also plays guitar and writes his own songs. “Punk folk,” he said. “My pursuit is more toward shock effect.” Sometimes he’ll write a song and play it once and never play it again.

“It’s a fun little release,” he said. “I still get butterflies. To me, that shows it has value. Makes you a little scared.”

He has started to open for Brother Townsend, a new local band. “I want to incorporate more comedy, lighten the groove a little bit,” he said.

Sheldon is also known around town for his role in the recent change of Port Townsend High School’s team name. He wrote a letter to the school board in June 2012 that rebooted the conversation about the former mascot “Redskins,” which he said was offensive, embarrassing and shameful.

His paintings are similarly straightforward, unabashed glimpses of mostly local scenes.

He works mostly in acrylic. “Oils are too toxic and smelly.” A family man, he wants to be near his daughters (both of whom now attend PTHS), and he paints in a small office-like room in his home. Rows of small paintings line the walls; for a while, his goal was to do a daily 5-by-7-inch painting. Selling those for $75, he said, “I could live like a king.” He stopped; it hurt his back and his eyes. His paintings have a lot of small details. Just inside his studio is a small portrait of folk musician Pete Seeger; the words on the banjo are legible: “This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.”

The Seeger portrait was done from a photo in a magazine; Sheldon often paints from photos, but creates some abstract paintings, too. Some of his work he calls “process paintings” – the process of making them matters more than the result.

“I don’t know that people relate to them as well as what I do now. I like how people relate to what I do now. But occasionally, if I feel trapped in representational, I’ll do that process painting – throw some paint at it and see what happens.”

He recalls having “painter’s block,” experimenting with mixing all kinds of paint, throwing it around, until a friend called his garage a “toxic wasteland.”

His work has been compared to that of Michael Hale and Luke Tornatzky.

“I’d like to be as cool as Luke one day,” Sheldon said, laughing.

“He’s got a totally different style … I throw paint all over the canvas and then start covering up my mistakes,” he said. The first part of the process usually goes pretty fast, “and then it becomes the little micro-details after that.” He said he often finishes 80 percent of a painting, and then lets it sit indefinitely.

“Nothing’s really ever completed until it’s sold.”

He does a few commissions and is currently doing a series of interior scenes of an old Victorian house in PT for a couple who raised their kids in that house.

He’s also painted a few portraits. “Portraits are more difficult,” he said. “I’m trying to incorporate more people in my scenes. Have more of a story going on.”

UFOs, LIGHT SHIPS

Many of his pieces are sold to people passing through, including someone from a Chinese art museum. “My paintings have gone everywhere!” he said. “I’m hoping to market to people from other planets.”

He’s kind of serious.

“Most of my paintings have kind of a UFO going on,” he said. “People don’t even notice, usually.… There’s usually a UFO in the sky.”

The ships “represent lightships of hope.… They’re a potentiality deal. Soul ships or light ships.”

He’s sold “probably about 300” paintings, but selling them isn’t his focus.

“I’ve got hundreds stuffed into closets and out in the garage,” he said. “Even if I don’t sell stuff, it doesn’t matter. I just like to produce it.… If I get desperate, I can just stick them in a wagon and take them down to Water Street.”

He'll probably keep painting houses rather than trying to be a full-time artist, he said. “Because if it turns into a job, I know what I’m gonna do – not want to go!”

Contact Sheldon at andrewsheldon@live.com.