My name is Lorne Szmek. I live in Langley, British Columbia (a suburb of Vancouver), which is on the extreme southwest coast of Canada. I have lived in BC for most of my life and have been here on the southwest coast since 1973.

When I was a small child I contracted polio while living for a short while in the Yukon Territories. I now find that I have developed Post Polio Syndrome and this is one of the reasons why I started to explore my artistic abilities. I have always enjoyed drawing and painting but now that I am no longer able to handle the workload of my duties as a machinist, I am trying to develope these talents to the point of being able to earn a living creating works of art. I have taken to doing sculpture because it seems to be a natural progression of my training and experience as a machinist. I know the strengths and weaknesses of different materials, how to combine them, how to release their inner tensions and movement. Most of the wood sculpture and all of the metal sculpture were done between 1998 and 2002, in between sessions of computer training and temporary employment. In 2000 I started to use the Paint application, that comes in Windows 98, in order to put expression to a few ideas I had at the time and it has turned into a bit of a passion. It is something that I can do whenever I have spare time in between my new job and new family. My plan for the future is to do what sculpture I can leading up to my retirement in 2009 and then to persue my sculpture fulltime after that. In the meantime I will add to my Paint portfolio that currently stands at about 250-300 images. Please check my Paint page for updates.