Katharine Cartwright

Nest Eggs on Wall Street, 19" x 28"

"I think in pictures and my paintings are my voice," says Katharine Cartwright. "As with speech, the central concept is the most important aspect of what I paint. Without meaning, my paintings would lack relevance and uniqueness." She paints in series and often has several different series going at the same time; a series may include only a dozen paintings, but frequently more, and may take anywhere from a year to a decade to complete. Starting by formulating a concept, she then selects materials, a color palette, and compositions to support her idea. In the series featured here, she has utilized broken egg shells in a manner that bridges realism and abstraction to express the fragility of life and our investments. Because the work is allegorical rather than representational, she disregards realistic color in favor of color strategies that contribute to an effective composition. Katharine has completed over 50 paintings in this series in the past four years and intends to continue it with the goal of incorporating new and meaningful elements with each new step.

All Cracked Up XXI, 28" x 19"

All Cracked Up XXII, 28" x 19"

Katharine's parents encouraged her to become an artist, providing her with a formal education in fine art at Linden Hall School for Girls, Kutztown University, The Maryland Institute College of Art, and The College of Charleston. Trained in techniques for oils and acrylics, she only began using watermedia ten years ago and fell in love with it. She is an inducted member of the National Association of Women Artists and a signature member of the North East Watercolor Society and the Missouri Watercolor Society. Her watercolors have been accepted into numerous national and international juried exhibitions and have won top awards, and her work is included in over one hundred private and corporate collections. In addition, her work will be featured in two books to be published this year -- Best of America Watermedia Artists Volume II and The Artistic Touch 4. Katharine maintains studios in New York and Maine and teaches painting workshops in all media throughout the U.S., with a special focus on concept development.

All Cracked Up XXIII, 28" x 19"

All Cracked Up XXIV, 28" x 19"

Please link over to Katharine's blog to see more of her work and get further information about her workshops. Be sure to link through to her website as well.

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Jane Freeman

Morning Meditation, 17" x 12"

Jane Freeman lives in northern Minnesota where winter can last approximately six months. She observes, “People can get depressed around here when winter begins, but I start to get excited because I know I will have nearly six months of uninterrupted painting! Isn’t that what every artist dreams of?” Because she loves to paint flowers, she grows and photographs most of her subjects during the relatively brief gardening season. She also loves to paint still life setups of things that have personal meaning to her, photographing them during the summer as well to get strong natural light. Painting the things she loves and holds dear gives her the passion and patience she needs to create her very detailed realistic paintings.

She paints in transparent watercolor 90% of the time, only resorting to other materials when a painting has had “bad luck.” Because she does not believe in letting go of a piece and never repeats anything, she has to make each painting work, but she also feels that some of her best work has come out of those struggles to save a piece.

Peony Passion, 20" x 28"

Last Peony Petals, 13" x 21"

Jane earned a BFA at the University of North Dakota but didn't become serious about her art until both children were grown and had left home. She focussed exclusively on watercolors and began competing nationally and internationally in 1999. The author of A Celebration of Light (North Light Books), her work has been included in a number of books, including Splash 7 and 9, and she has been featured in many art magazines over the past ten years. In her words, "I think getting six pages in the American Artist magazine and eight pages in International Artist Magazine made me take myself seriously. Up until then, I kept thinking this was just a fluke and it would pass. I did not believe in myself.

"My life as an artist has surpassed anything I dreamed was possible. This has encouraged me to go deeper and try harder. I hope I am contemplating a new difficult painting when I'm 85. Life is short but my days are long and full of blessings because of watercolor. That is why I love to teach at workshops because if I can turn on that excitement in anyone it is worth everything. To see artists grow and reach their potential is just an amazing feeling. I love my life. Now how great is that?”

Sauced Grapes, 19" x 28"

A Slice of Summer, 20" x 29"

Please visit Jane's blog for more information about her work and also follow her link to her website to see additional paintings.

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The Year in Review -- 2009

The Slide feature has been discontinued as of March 2012.

Today marks a milestone for this blog -- one year of shining a spotlight on watercolor through the diverse works of 29 fabulous artists. I am indebted to Robin Purcell for encouraging me to create this blog. I had no idea when I started this where it would take me, and I've enjoyed the year more than I ever imagined -- meeting new artists and sharing an amazing variety of paintings with an ever-increasing audience. Thanks to everyone for supporting this effort and especially to the artists who so generously shared their work and helped to spread the word.

Please enjoy the slide review -- one painting for each of the 29 artists showcased on the blog this past year. To see the original post, click on an artist's name in the Index Links at the bottom of the sidebar or go directly to a blog or website by clicking on a link under Featured Artists - 2009.

And please join me in 2010 for more wonderful watercolors. I have a great lineup started and am very excited about the upcoming features!!

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David Coffin

Spring Rivergold, 2006, 12" x 16"

watercolor and gouache on acrylic-primed paper

David Coffin's art is inspired primarily by his life-long love of pictures, of art history, and of craft and popular-culture traditions and only secondarily by the look of the "World Out There." While he is intoxicated by the beauty of the world, it is the potential of handmade images for giving us unique experiences that keeps him interested in painting. In his words, "I've always been most entranced by paintings built on things that only skilled, imaginative hands can do -- things like invoke non-physical realities, combine ideas and objects that don't meet in Real Life, assemble evocative new patterns, color harmonies and textures, and most of all, generate new feelings in purely visual ways -- that's the enduring mystery of pictures to me. I want to be a part of the exploration of that potential, and if I ever give another person a moment of delight or delicious pause because of something I discovered and brought into existence while painting, it's worth it."

Spring River, 2005, 15" x 22"
watercolor and gouache on acrylic-primed paper

David was a painting major in the late 1960s, but it was only after college that he discovered watercolor to be the perfect medium for his tastes and instincts. He was a transparent watercolor purist for many years and was dedicated to representational imagery in the service of conceptual compositions -- basically a painter with the mind of a collagist, more intrigued with what he might assemble than with what he could find in real life. His work won awards in the Chicago art-fair world in the 1970s and was included in national shows including the National Watercolor Society annual shows; he had a painting published in one of Maxine Masterfield's books and was invited to be artist-in-residence at a community in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

Spring Riverblue, 2006, 30" x 22"
watercolor and gouache on acrylic-primed paper

Eventually, the need to look for another passion for a living led him to spend several decades as a writer and editor of Threads Magazine, a well-known national publication for fiber arts. Then, in 2000, a powerful dream changed everything. He awoke from his dream of touring a painter's studio and, suddenly filled with an exhilirating enthusiasm for painting again, began to plan his escape from the magazine world. He also decided to let go of all the "purist" restrictions he'd accepted in the past, to allow every possible material, inspiration and impulse, and to let preparation and play merge completely, welcoming abstraction, improvisation and expressive gestures into his work.

Mates, c. 1970, 16" x 12"

Iris Time #3 (part of a triptych), c. 1970, 12" x 9"

Please visit David's blog and be sure to link from there to see his daily paintings on Eyes & Skies.

Linda Hancock

Light Track #4, 22" x 30"

Linda Hancock's work in painting and drawing focuses on light and shadow, positive and negative space. She is drawn to the forms that Circumstance provides -- a bike leaning against a wall with a low sun throwing shadows on the wall, a fence or bench that has its shadow pooling on the ground, an interesting architectural detail with its shadow on a textured surface. Living in Wisconsin, with its many-layered seasons and strong light at all times of year, provides unlimited opportunities for composition. Linda observes, "I paint 'in studio' using photographic references taken while traveling and while on 'time outs' from the studio, when the confines of being indoors and the constant insistence of commissioned work begin to undermine my creativity. A fresh look at common sights reignites my excitement for painting and gives me a jumpstart." Linda's fulltime work as a lettering artist and the years of training in the use of letterforms -- which are really just codified arrangements of positive and negative space -- inform her painting and drawing, and the precision that is required of a lettering artist is visible in the attention to detail in her paintings.

Madison Bike #1, 22" x 30"

Florence Bike, 22" x 30"

Linda has been a working artist for over 30 years, with an emphasis in watercolor painting and drawing. Having built her business as a lettering artist, she decided a few years ago to “finally take some time” to get back to her interest in painting, and she chose watercolor as the challenge to be pursued. An essentially self-taught watercolorist, her emphasis is on still life, with a continuing desire to explore light and shadow. Her paintings have been selected for exhibition in juried shows, most recently winning Best of Show in the ArtKudos exhibition for 2009. Although her undergraduate degree is in English Literature, Linda began studying letterforms at The Colorado College in 1968 and she continues to maintain a fulltime commercial lettering and calligraphy studio in Madison, Wisconsin. She has exhibited in Madison, Minneapolis, MN, Chicago, IL, New York City and London, UK. Her calligraphic work has been selected for the permanent collection of the Chazen Museum of Art in Madison and the Newberry Library in Chicago and has been showcased in many of the juried annual exhibitions in the international publication Letter Arts Review.

Light Track #3, 22" x 30"

Light Track #1, 22" x 30"

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

Carol Carter

Mixed Messages, each panel 30" x 22"

Carol Carter has been painting for 30 years -- exploring figures, places, and narratives. Her favorite narratives revolve around situations that face all of us -- including motherhood, passages of time, sisterhood, aging, connectedness, and other aspects of the human condition. Growing up in Florida, her strongest visual impression was of water as a center for human activity and, in much of her work, water provides the setting for anonymous figures. While evocative and sensual watercolors of swimmers are a signature theme, she is equally at home with dramatic botanical images as well as portraits. Her use of vibrant saturated color adds to the mysterious, seductive, intense and inviting images she paints.

Florida Corkscrew Nature Preserve, 40" x 60"

Swamp Blessed Morning, 22" x 30"

Carol received her MFA from Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri. She maintains a studio in St. Louis and teaches at the university level as well as conducting workshops throughout the country. She was awarded an MAA-NEA Fellowship in Painting and Works on Paper in 1994 and was voted Best St. Louis Artist by The Riverfront Times in 2000. In 2002 her work was chosen for the cover of New American Painting magazine and in 2003, the U.S. Embassy sponsored a solo exhibition of her work at the Teatro del Centro de Arte in Guayaquil, Ecuador. She was a visiting artist in Oslo and Stavanger, Norway in 1999, 2001, and 2003. The Turner Center for the Arts in Valdosta, GA held a retrospective of her work in 2006, and she also had an exhibition in Guayaquil, Ecuador in July 2008 and a retrospective at East Central College in Fulton, MO in 2009. Different Strokes, published in 2008 by Quarto in London, England, featured her work both in the book and on the book cover. Her work is represented in many public and private art collections.

Men Are So High Maintenance, 40" x 60"

Renewal, 40" x 30"

Please visit Carol's blog to see more of her work.