Judy Welsh

Sunflowers, 26" x 20"
watercolor on Yupo

A fourth generation Californian, Judy Welsh grew up in the coastal town of Santa Barbara, and her love of the outdoors has been nurtured by the beauty of her state from the sea to the Sierras. Since her early childhood, painting has been a way of seeing and celebrating the Creator. She finds plein air painting especially inspiring because it brings forth an emotional response that is not readily accessible for her in the studio. Using rich, saturated color and interlocking shapes that hug the contours of her subject matter, she hopes her audience will be as excited by her finished paintings as she was when she painted them. Recently, she has been experimenting with alternative painting surfaces such as watercolor canvas and synthetic paper, both of which present new technical challenges and offer new avenues for creativity.

Wet Medium/Wild Color, 20" x 26"
watercolor on Yupo

Judy holds a bachelor's degree in fine art and also did graduate work in art at San Jose State University. She has won many awards, including second place in a recent landscape competition in "International Artist Magazine," has had her work published in Splash 9, The Best of Watercolor (North Light Books, 2006), and is represented in both private and public collections. She is an award-winning signature member of the California Watercolor Association, and her paintings have been included in exhibitions at The Triton Museum of Art, The Art Museum of Los Gatos, and The de Saisset Museum at Santa Clara University, as well as in Europe and Japan. Judy has owned and managed an art business for the last twenty years, doing freelance art, teaching art to all ages, and consulting for both business and private clients. Her most recent passion involves teaching both art-making and art appreciation to her three grand-daughters.

Rock Dwellers, 20" x 30"

Cinnabar Hill, 30" x 22"

Ahh Umunhum, 22" x 30"

Please visit Judy's website to see more of her work.

Sandy Maudlin

Past Images, 24" x 36"
watercolor with wax batik and sumi ink on rice paper

Like many artists, Sandy Maudlin enjoys the process of painting at least as much as the final result. She loves to explore the varied possibilities of what paint can do and how she can use it to express what she feels. Working in everything from transparent watercolor to oils, she is hard-pressed to identify either a favorite medium or subject, preferring to push forward to discover the next surprise. As a watercolorist, Sandy is equally adept with transparent watercolor and fluid acrylics, applying them to either traditional watercolor paper or Yupo synthetic paper, and presenting her subjects in styles ranging from traditional realism to experimental and abstract. She brings a willingness to experiment and a fondness for novel techniques to her painting, with exciting results. Sandy firmly believes that an artist's style is within and will be expressed no matter what, and her fervent hope is that people will be engaged by her paintings and feel an emotional response to them.

Golden Venice, 19" x 24"
fluid acrylics on Arches watercolor paper

Sandy earned a bachelor's degree in art from Indiana University and has furthered her education with workshops taught by many well-known artists such as John Salminen, Carla O'Conner, Jean Grastorf, and George James, among others. She is a signature member of both the Watercolor Society of Indiana and the Ohio Watercolor Society and has won numerous Best of Show awards in many annual juried shows. Her paintings are included in public and private collections throughout the U.S. and Europe. Finding it very fulfilling to encourage and watch as others grow creatively, she also teaches weekly classes in her home studio near Cincinnati, Ohio and gives workshops both nationally and internationally.

Junior's Advice, 26" x 20"
transparent watercolor on Yupo

Interlude, 26" x 18"
transparent watercolor on Yupo


Party, 40" x 26"
transparent watercolor on Yupo

Go to Sandy's blog to find out more about her work.

Pablo Villicaña Lara

Morning Offering, 18" x 24"

Although he was raised in both Mexican and American cultures, most of Pablo Villicaña Lara's paintings reflect his Mexican Native heritage. Depicting handmade objects such as pottery, baskets, blankets, and musical instruments in combination with flowers and other cultural objects, he creates paintings that speak of the heart of his people and the culture they are trying to preserve. With bold color and dramatic lighting, his paintings evoke a sense of ancient history and tradition, much like the stories passed down orally from generation to generation.

Artesenias Mexicanas, 18" x 24"

Speaking of his attraction to watercolor, Pablo observes, "I love everything about watercolor -- it's inherent luminous qualities, the vibrant colors, the beautiful granulating flowing textures -- though it took me several years to summon the courage to face the challenges I had heard about and it proved to be true for a few years before I discovered that there's absolutely nothing you cannot do with watercolors from the most expressionistic style to the most real and even hyper-realism. I think I fall somewhere in between: I love creating images that look real and have a presence, a sense of light, but also have hints of flowing washes and spatters."

Story Teller, 19" x 30"

Pablo was born in a small village thirty miles south of the California/Mexico border. He came to the U.S. when he was five to receive medical attention for the polio he had contracted at age two. Although he had always intended to return to Mexico, he was so far along in school by the time the medical treatments were completed that he decided to stay and finish school. He has an MFA in drawing from the California College of the Arts (formerly the California College of Arts and Crafts) and has won numerous awards for work exhibited in watercolor shows throughout the U.S. Most recently, he was invited to become a member of the International Guild of Realism and was the only watercolorist accepted into their annual exhibitions for the past two years.

Yellow Hammer, 16" x 12"

Mi Rebozo, 20" x 14"

Go to Pablo's blog to see more of his work.

A brief update...

Starting this coming week, I'll be posting a new feature every other week, rather than weekly. I'm thrilled with the interest that weekly posting has generated, but I've been spending so much time on curatorial and editorial tasks that I haven't had enough time for my own painting. Please continue to stop by -- I've got a wonderful bunch of artists lined up for you.

Carolyn Lord

Blue Note Poppies, 15" x 11"

Carolyn Lord has a very direct manner of painting shape-to-shape that was influenced by a George Post workshop in 1976 and solidified during a summer painting trip in the Utah desert two years later. This method of painting interlocking forms was perfectly suited to those climate conditions. There is no glazing or building up of color and values -- everything is painted directly onto dry paper with a size 36 Goliath brush. However, she also is comfortable with a wet-into-wet approach and now varies her manner of painting depending on the light, the humidity, the subject, and her inspiration.

L and Chestnut, 15" x 22"

She is happiest painting what is around her -- her garden, her town, familiar objects. She enjoys the play of light on the things around her as well as the juxtaposition of objects -- golden hay bales and lavender-blue skies, a garden hose with an orange tree, low buildings with tall telephone poles -- and they become the formal elements of line, volume, perspective, color, and value in her paintings. Her work presents an intensely personal point of view, celebrating the overlooked and the banal in the landscape, digging deep into the familiar to find her subjects.

Front Porch Pots, 15" x 22"

Peaceful Pacific, 11" x 15"

Waning Autumn, 22" x 15"

Carolyn has an impressive list of accomplishments, from shows to feature articles. Please go to her website to see more of her work and details of her career.

Belinda Del Pesco

Pink & White Roses, 14" x 14" -- watercolor

Belinda Del Pesco works in the classical tradition of landscape, figure, and still-life painting, dividing her time between watercolor painting and printmaking. A life-long fascination with the nuances of face and figure -- and the seasonal changes in natural light on everyday things -- have been a constant source of inspiration. Her affinity for the artistic traditions of the late 19th and early 20th century is further influenced by exposure to the vast art resources on the internet. In her own words, "As artists, we are living in an extraordinary time of split-second exposure in both directions; we can see and be influenced by millions of art images, methods and history about our heroes, and we can share what we produce under those influences. My experience as an artist is completely different than my mother's generation, and I'm very appreciative of that." Belinda prefers to paint on very smooth surfaces -- plate bristol, hot-pressed paper, and gessoed wood and uses both watercolor and colored pencils when adding to her oil-based prints. Her printmaking methods include dark-field monotype, woodcut/linocut, collograph, dry point engraving and etching.

Movie Night, 5" x 7" -- monotype ghost with watercolor

Got Any More Cookies, 6" x 9" -- linocut with watercolor

Originally from New England, Belinda was raised in a family of emigré artists and inventors, where creativity was encouraged and seasoned by influences from Italy, France, England, and Canada. After earning a degree at the University of Massachusetts, she headed west and went to work in public relations in the entertainment industry. After a decade-long hiatus from art, an invitation to paint plein air re-ignited her love for watercolors, and, in 2001, she left the corporate world to paint full time. Since then she's won numerous awards and commissions and her paintings are in collections worldwide. In 2005, she started blogging as a means to share her painting and printmaking methods. To date, she has catalogued over 400 posts, and blogging has added to her sense of community as a watercolorist. Access to other watercolorists used to be limited to books, magazines, and gallery hopping; now, through blogs, online friendships, artist forums, and google searches, her camaraderie with other watercolorists is deep, wide, and international.

Pomegranates from Arizona, 6" x 8" -- watercolor

Respite, 7" x 7" -- watercolor

Please visit Belinda's blog to see more of her work and to link to her website and her online sales venues.