Gary Hernandez still remembers his first painting experience. He was 4 years old when his brother let him play with his paint-by-numbers set.

“I remember the smell of the oil paint,” Hernandez said. “I really liked it, and I liked the feel of painting. By the time I was in third grade, I bought a set of oil paint with brushes and started painting.”

Now, Hernandez has been a full-time artist for 26 years and a member of The Woodlands Art League for four years. Formerly, he was president of the Art League of Houston before moving to The Woodlands area.

“Most of the time, it’s paint what you see,” Hernandez said. “I see something, I get an idea from it, and then I create a painting. Sometimes I go through a drawing process; sometimes the photographic references are so good that that’s what I use.”

Hernandez studied at the Glassell School of Art, formerly known as the Houston Museum of Fine Arts School. After graduating, but before becoming a full-time artist, Hernandez worked in an art-centric career, running a graphic design firm until the late ‘80s.

As a realistic painter, Hernandez has also fine-tuned his drawing skills because being able to draw well helps his paintings look more lifelike, he said.

“Right now, the thing that inspires me the most is my family,” Hernandez said. “It used to be my models because I was a life-drawing instructor. They were in my studio. They were the ones that were my references.”

Hernandez has always preferred painting people, places and things that are familiar and meaningful to him. Known also for his floral paintings, Hernandez would grow his own flowers in his garden at home to use as references for his pieces.

“Everything was very personal,” Hernandez said. “It was kind of like an autobiography. I was painting stuff that I saw, flowers that I grew and people that I knew. If it was a travel scene, it was places that I had been.”

In addition to painting, Hernandez also teaches oil painting in The Woodlands on Mondays and Thursdays; he teaches additional classes in Cypress and Conroe.

“As you teach, you explain what you’re trying to do, what you want them to do [and] what you want them to see,” Hernandez said. “Once they see, then the world opens up. That’s what [I was taught]—[my] instructor said, ‘The difference between me and you is that I can see things you can’t.’”

Hernandez said art is a sustainable career for him because of the classes he teaches, the paintings he sells in galleries and the commissioned work he creates for clients.

“I am a working artist, and it’s different from an artist that has a day job,” Hernandez said. “This is what I do for a living. I’ve been doing it for a long time.”

Gary Hernandez 713-569-9202 www.garyhernandezstudio.com