I sometimes feel that my work is easily overlooked because of my subject matter I’m a representational painter working mostly in landscapes. More specifically, I paint landscapes that are familiar to me. So, I paint a lot of rural scenes, small towns, and gardens in the Potomac Highlands and Shenandoah Valley. In the most negative […]
Local paintings, big ideas Read More »
Here are 31 “Watermarks” paintings that I created during January 2025 — one for each day. They are painted in a sketchbook filled with lightweight, multi-media paper, so the paper can’t take a lot of water before it starts to buckle. I chose this lightweight paper on purpose to keep me loose and gestural, with
Watermarks Project – January 2025 Read More »
This may sound silly to some who know me, but I regularly forget how to paint. Silly, right? But it’s true. And it has to do with confidence. My confidence gets tested more often than I’d like to admit, but it does happen, especially when I run into a painting project that does not go
In rural areas, opportunities to show work are few and far between. That’s why I am thankful for organizations like the West Virginia Watercolor Society and Hampshire County (W.Va.) Arts Council, and venues like the Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community in Harrisonburg, Va., or the Clarke County Historical Association’s Burwell-Morgan Mill in Millwood, Va., where there
An ode to artistic opportunities … Read More »
I recently was chatting with a person who had taken one of my beginner watercolor classes, and she told me that she’s always looking for barns now. We laughed about it, but I was sincerely pleased to hear her say that. Some of the landscape projects we had worked on in her class included barns.
Learning to see and appreciate Read More »
I had a painting opportunity this fall that I’ll long remember. I was at an event over the summer and bumped into a couple whom I have known since I was a child. They had two children who were also in my 4-H club, both a few years younger than me. I also very literally
Laurel Mountain Reverie Read More »
In the few posts I’ve made on this blog, I’ve been an advocate for plein air painting — which is painting on location, rather than working from reference photos. I think plein air and “from life” work is important because of the advancements I saw in myself and in my work once I started painting
Trusting your senses Read More »
One of the critical elements of painting is, of course, the paint. But let me help novice painters and save them some money — you don’t need nearly as much paint as you might think. What I mean by that is you don’t need a rainbow of colors packaged in tubes or pans (dried cakes
Materials – choosing the right paint colors Read More »
“Plein air” is a French term, loosely translated as “outdoor” and refers to the act of painting on location. The notoriety of plein air painting is most often attached to the development of French Impressionism in the 1870s as painters such as Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, and Alfred Sisley eschewed the Classical conventions
Why paint plein air? Read More »
I fell in love with watercolor the moment my high school art teacher introduced it. Our lesson was to take a pile of cardboard boxes, draw them, and paint them in watercolor, using just one color: brown. This seemingly simple lesson taught me these basic watercolor principles: Depicting values is critical You have to reserve
