Facing a Road Trip

Excitement was building to pitch level to attend The Art of the Portrait, the PSA’s annual spring conference spanning four days in D.C. A buffet line of world famous portraitists would impart their skills, original paintings would be offered in an affordable range, portrait painters would nearly finish a painting of a live model, and different-styles would be demonstrated along with lively teachers sharing–well, for a portrait artist–it’s like dying and going to heaven. And yes, there’s even a Sunday inspirational hour, thanks to Gordon Wetmore who began this before he died and left it as his legacy.

For me, an additional joy was watching the demonstration given by Mary Whyte, a watercolor portrait artist, since I work in both oil and watercolor media. We left early Thursday morning with a picnic lunch. The trip was easy, and we pulled off at the Virginia state line’s welcome center. We pulled out gourmet sandwiches on German rye and sourdough bread fixed by my travel companion and husband, Sandy. Boiled eggs, pickles, and Scottish shortbread finished it off. We were wrapping everything up when I heard someone yell my name. Now Smithfield, yes, but the Virginia state line? Turns out this was a Classmate and she was antiquing to Pennsylvania with her husband. An interlude of surprise.

At the Hyatt Regency, we were checked in and escorted to fourth floor, conscious of needing all my energy for the exciting but grueling days ahead. I chilled a little, then attended the inaugural event of each year, the Paint-Off, where fifteen artists surrounded five models and raced to finish a painting of one of them. The crowd gathered in seated units in front of a model plus three artists, and watched. Or we migrated to another station and watched another three artists perform. In transit, we might move closer to take pictures. Only once did a lady near me cry, “Down in front!” to a man who stood over 6′ who blocked the view in front of the rest of us. What you learn and see in this marathon is incredible. Like I told a volunteer at the end, you have to afford this conference–it’s worth five years’ worth of the very best courses. In the supplies line, we were exchanging impressions of museums in Holland with a participant who had come from there. I talked to Californians, Illinoisans, several from the South, New Jersey, Australia, and the young man I had sat next to at last year’s banquet from Estonia who won another prize this year.

When time was called on the Paint-Off, the paintings were spirited off to a room where a silent auction extended throughout the conference, followed by a brief skirmish at the end so the highest bidder could take them home. All during the regularly scheduled programming, the art supply vendors sold top-line products, and in my first break, I located a new brush I’d seen on line, the “comber,” which gives fantastic hair lines. I got one in three different sizes. Also, art books were sold in a separate line–books you really can’t get elsewhere, sometimes. Once you’d paid and picked up your purchase, you might drop by to see a sculptor or painter in the middle of a demonstration. Lunchtime was not for lunch–I never eat when I go–it was for standing in line to get your portfolio critiqued, or laying out your portfolio in a dedicated room to garner comments. Or for lining up behind authors to get them to sign their book you just bought.

Or you could visit the sanctuary of the top 21 Portrait Finalists, study them, photograph them, pick your favorite, and vote. This year the best prize and the people’s choice was the same artist. Besides these features, a drawing was held for Hughes Easel, and smaller merchandise awards were drawn by the individual vendors. If you could possibly squeeze it in, you got to meet your state ambassador, get your photo taken as an alumni, and if lucky, drink a cup of coffee or eat a banana upstairs or drink a coffee outside on the street at Panerra Bread which looked a part of the hotel, but wasn’t.

Friday night’s special event was the sale of 6 x 9 originals done by former prize winners and PSA faculty. I got my choice, by one of my very favorite artists, Bart Lindstrom, although I didn’t realize at the time I had his. I had taken his workshops last year and learned a lot from him. On Saturday night, the gala banquet featured yummy food, a noted guest speaker, networking, and the presentation of the awards to thunderous applause. I’m already friends with several fellow painters from our table.

We attended the scheduled top artists’ demo sessions as they painted models from life using the atelier sight-size method. Half the screen we saw was filled with the art in progress, the other half, the model’s face in the same position. As the artist moved and painted, sometimes explaining what they did, we watched. Questions, questions: why was that yellow, why that pink? And bit by bit as they progressed, we saw the subject evolve before our eyes. In one presentation, we watched two artists at the same time. By the finish, the likenesses were there, but the products were entirely different. We watched Mary Whyte whose oversized watercolor work recently showed in a SC Museum and who challenged me last year to take the plunge into larger paintings, paint her personal model.

Thanks to Mary, I now have 10 sheets of 300-pound 40 x 60 watercolor paper. My subjects and themes are similar to hers as well, the working person, and I do have an invitation to pursue a proposed exhibit three years out which I now can begin to start projecting. Of course after seeing demonstrations galore, you were just itching to do one yourself, and the artist in you was screaming, I want to try it. So of course when they offered a participatory drawing session from a model, I attended it with my clipboard, grey-blue paper, pencils, and charcoals, and was happy with what I turned out in an hour and a half.

Daniel Greene’s Palette

We watched a two and a half hour demonstration by renowned portrait artist Daniel Greene using his famous palette of colors, and saw the model before him emerge onto his canvas. We watched two artists race side by side to produce likenesses of a model, and in spite of their very different products, the end result was they both looked like the model.We listened to a panel of artists which included Raymond Kinstler tell about their experiences like his of painting notables like Kathryn Hepburn and other high-dollar clients. I took a special session with Virgil Elliott about archival properties of paints and solvents, and he showed us his charts of colors left in the sun for several years to demonstrate how lightfast certain ones were or weren’t so that we could make choices that would benefit our clients from our decisions, and merit our reputation for giving the best fine art has to offer. Jennifer Welty gave us tips based on setting up visits to her clients to photograph children in their best settings. She particularly liked spots where light streamed through windows. She, Virgil, and Paul Newton from Australia discussed the most enduring poses and how to enhance portraits with professional lighting. Jennifer showed us her travel case of equipment for on-the-site lighting. Paul set up his lighting with a class model and showed us how he used reflectors. At the same time, other specialists were helping six other groups/subject areas.

Absorbing all the information available in this event was like drinking water out of a fire hose, but I never tired from the exposure. My brain just shut down from overload at night. After the conference was over, I enjoyed studying excellent portraits in the National Portrait Gallery, a bus trip ordered up by PSA. The amazing way the wetness of the eye was caught was a standard at one point in the history of portrait painting, and the colors exceptional. But like all good things, one’s saturation even of this happens after 2-1/2 hours—you simply cannot absorb a fraction of what you see in one trip—and so we migrated to the garden café for a coffee and treat before heading back through the cherry trees a-bloom in Washington, D.C.

I kept up pretty darn well for an over-taxed, ADHD, dyslexic, readjusting my schedule every whipstitch and keeping up with my junk. That is until the very end, when I thought I had made a transfer to my husband that didn’t happen. My portfolio went missing. I bugged the lovely hotel staff and finally after an afternoon, night, and morning of not knowing, found out the PSA’s on-the-ball staff had loaded it with their equipment and taken it back with them. I had left it leaning on the back of a chair. I teased Christine Egnoski that I hoped they wouldn’t pay me not to come back next year. Because if I can, I surely will return for more next year in Atlanta. See more pictures on the trip and event @ http://www.pinterest.com/joartis/joining-top-portrait-artists-in-dc/

KERR ARTS & CULTURAL CENTER, Kerrville, TX, April 1—April 27, 2014 37th Annual Exhibition, Southern Watercolor Society

When I got the news that my painting had been one of 80 paintings selected by Linda Doll, president of the National Watercolor Society, out of close to 500 entries to the Southern Watercolor Society’s 37th Annual Exhibition, we immediately decided we had to visit it in Kerrville. This had become almost a tradition for us with SW, when another painting of mine was picked for the Louisiana show and we went. The Southern Watercolor Society is a large regional consisting of 18 states plus Washington, D.C. I’ve been in several, and am a signature member.

My husband and I got off just a little past 4 a.m. on Friday and headed for Fayetteville Airport–from Fayetteville to Atlanta to Austin, to rental car agency, to road trip. By late lunchtime, we were already in the Texas Hill country, looking at the beautiful Texas Bluebonnets and fields of wildflowers my granddaughter would have loved in between natural limestone walls. We made frequent stops to see interesting sights, seeing names we recognized and those we didn’t, like Whataburger. A main stop was at Johnson City, Lyndon B. Johnson’s childhood hometown where we viewed a museum of his life in short, and hustled on to the LBJ Ranch. That was still in the outskirts of Johnson City by Texas calculations and held the Texas White House, as President Johnson’s home had been dubbed. We added ourselves onto a tour through the house, and tried to imagine heads of state sitting and eating there. While quite nice, it was certainly not pretentious in any way, and the “cabinet meetings” were held out under a stupendously gorgeous live oak.

Of greatest note was the high technology present in every room–three TVs, each tuned simultaneously to a major tv network which LBJ watched continually and phoned the network chief if he heard anything said about him he didn’t like. Evidently we had just missed Obama’s visit for the 50th anniversary commemoration of the Civil Rights Summit that LBJ had passed in 1964. Of note in the 60’s house décor were Lady Bird’s predilections for yellow countertops in the kitchen and landscape wallpaper in the dining room minus any cowboys or cattle.

We rode around the ranch, stopped to look at cactus–it was my first ever visit to Texas–and Bessie and the clumps of cows sitting in the shade of a tree. We visited the Sauer-Beckman Living History Farm, a reproduction of the historic farmstead of pioneers who lived a century ago, where they still make sausage, shear sheep, can, etc. We saw luxurious stretches of LBJ’s Ranch before heading for our Holiday Inn Express for the night at Kerrville, Texas, and a–you guessed it–3-inch steak at the local steakhouse. Our 20-hour day slammed us into bed and sleep.

Next day, bright and early, we headed for the Kerr Arts and Cultural Center in downtown Kerrville which is known for its art and folk festivals. The KACC has hosted NWS and AWS traveling exhibits a number of times. Kerrville has other local arts organizations; Museum of Western Arts, Hill Country Arts Foundation, Symphony of the Hills, Playhouse 2000, plus several galleries.

The gallery was showstopper beautiful, as you can tell from the photos, and we excitedly entered and located Crab-Net, placed spot-on, right between what turned out to be the Silver Medallion Winner and the Gold Medallion Winner. I knew the Silver Medallion winner, Dean Mitchell, the artist to Crab-Net’s left, from picking him up at the airport in Raleigh with Watercolor Society of North Carolina Board Members to take him to one of our shows. I bought his book at the time, which he autographed, and I absolutely love his work, and was honored to hang next to him. From the very outset I noticed what a cohesive show Linda had juried, even though she had included what she later said were “the best paintings from each genre–realistic, abstract, photo-realist, etc.”

The catalogue of all our paintings denoting the winners is yet to be published, so perhaps I will give you a little follow-up, then. The prizes were not announced until the very last at the later reception, and the signs appointed then, and photographs from the official photographer made then. I’m looking forward to seeing the one she made of me next to my love, Crab-Net .

The paintings at this show were “some of the best painters in the U.S. today,” claimed Linda Doll, National Watercolor Society President, the chosen juror for the show at the demonstration before the gallery opening. She shared other comments and remarks about the show. She said that her bias was in favor of creativity and simplicity, that the ones she picked were the ones that when she walked away from them, she could not forget. She said that this show was made up of awesome paintings and was equal in every way to a show from National Watercolor Society or American Watercolor Society, that these paintings were the best of the best.

Linda demonstrated her technique for toning paper, painting a multi-colored grey as a grisaille (an underlayer; see https://joriginals.net/paint-with-unfair-advantage/), and then adding the flesh tones and darker shadows. She uses only three colors–the primaries, of course, but the blue is the printer’s choice of blue, cyan. She has only four values in her paintings–high, local, shade, and shadow. When Linda would finish a passage on a prepared paper, she dropped it on the floor. As an abstract painter, she produced beautiful realistic works. Linda was most informative and I know those who took her week-long course before the show profited greatly, judging from enthusiastic comments from ladies near me.

From the demo I waited on the steps of the Center for my ride, and we joined the attending members of the club to YO Ranch Restaurant and enjoyed another Texas meal where we sat next to North Carolinians, would you believe. Linda Pelc presided over a SW meeting and I promised to look into a venue for the Southern Watercolor for an upcoming year’s show. Linda Pelc also had a painting in the show.

Exhausted, we left the show for the home of my husband’s best friend since early corporate days with SEI, then through IBM years–and his wife, Lynn. We enjoyed a wonderful meal eating delicious Mexican food at a favorite restaurant of theirs, catching up on WWII mementos and  airplanes and other interesting topics. Back at home, David showed us his helmets from all over, and other memorabilia collected at antique sales. I made friends with their shy black kitty who decided she liked pawing at me through the stair banister rails. We slept like babies, were treated like king and queen to a delicious egg and toast and coffee breakfast, walked their acres and fearfully tried to forget scorpions frequented their grounds. We saw the dry creek bed–drought time–and all the various tree houses and retaining walls for water, etc., that David had built with wood and wonderfully prevalent limestone. Almost all the rocks held fossils in them. I took a picture of the painting David and Lynn owned of mine hanging over their chair in the living room.

About mid-day, we said good-byes and headed for my husband’s cousin’s who lived not far away, in Dripping Springs. From there we traveled an hour to meet Donna’s sister Chris at Olive Garden and the cousins caught up and made promises to share photographs. We talked into the evening, but Donna had to work next day, so we sank gratefully into bed and were awakened to loud thunderclaps and pouring rain, one outbreak after another, right up to the moment we had to leave for the airport. Donna had prepared wonderful fruit, awesome blueberry nut bread, coffee and again, we left the hill country sated and happy, the drive to the airport uneventful, the release from a car that wasn’t ours quick, the walk to the airport no sweat, and two jaunts home again, jiggety jog, connections made, seatmates pleasant, debarking painless. I sat next to a serviceman returning to his wife and 8-year-old daughter after a year away and got the opportunity to thank him for what he had done for all of us.

I’ll admit my Tuesday was one of the worst Mondays I’ve ever had, but the memories of my art jog to the Texas Hill Country were worth it, and I’ve been savoring them ever since. Join me at Pinterest to see more photos.

Colby Lost in Art

Teaching art isn’t always about imparting knowledge. Take my lovely little granddaughter for an example. Was she born loving art with art-loving genes? I don’t know the answer to that, and it could start an endless theoretical debate which might be fun. Maybe it would give evidence in support of jumpstarting an experimental course in art within the school’s educational system. But the significance I’m about to share with you would be lost.

Teaching art, I believe, is a prospect of catching the fire. Fire comes often from a mentor. Art is caught, not taught, if you would like a catch phrase. My granddaughter, Colby, lives three and a half hours away. Whenever I see her, whether she comes here, or I go there, she starts off asking me, “Gemma, we go your art studio?” She just won’t let up until she has the response she wants or is confronted with the impossibility of having it. Whatever it takes in driving time, she’s up for it.

My daughter-in-law Christy tells me how she pauses before a painting of mine they have hanging and starts talking about it, about the pops of color. She asks questions of color and design seemingly advanced for one so young. She loves going with me to art exhibits, and at my most recent one-person show in Elizabeth City, NC, at Floor2Ceiling Design LLP, she sat with the adults for a–hold onto your socks–3-hour course in watercolor painting. Plus, she helped me set up for an adult course in watercolor I was teaching, possibly becoming my youngest art intern at 5 years of age. Asked in class what the primary colors are, Colby sang them out. Asked what mixing two colors produced, she chimed in with the answer. What’s the secret? Art is exciting for her. It’s a land of Oz.

Before that course of mine at one of the Watercolor Society of NC, Colby attended with me at what must have been a boring show for kids, but was a fabulous presentation by the judge for the annual exhibit of WSNC held at the Arts of the Albemarle where I keep a continuing presence in Elizabeth City. She sat through it all, coloring, wanting to get up, returning to coloring. The Friday night before she went with us on the artwalk where I first met Nick Nixon and his wife Amy which lead to my one-person show, and gallery representation. Colby was really into the whole event. If she bounced too high–well, on to the next art place, each one new, different, and exciting–usually because every one of the businesses encouraged some experimental testing of the waters.

We have re-visited the art scene several times, and she is still enthusiastic about it. Her own picture was included in a show at Floor2Ceiling, along with her sister Kimberlee’s–and of course, yours truly helped them like I do my own students from Art on Broad Atelier in Dunn.

View from the Studio

Considering which, I ask, what makes it so special? A division of j’Original’s Art Studio at 217 East Broad Street, my studio is a designed-for-nothing-but-art one which my son and I own together. (By the way, he is proud of his mother.) I have it set up with the show window front portion purposed as the gallery, full of paintings framed exquisitely, on easels, and on the walls, some up a story. The two-tiered hanging makes it look like Soho or San Francisco or Paris, I think. That’s an ambience I love. Other than having Southern light source instead of the preferred-for-artist Northern lighting, it’s perfect.

The next part you settle into visually is the teaching area, a roomy place with simple, white, six-foot folding tables arranged in an open square, with table easels set up in close to eight spots, a board on the easel, and small easels beside each big one to hold a book. I have added two standup easels and am trying to convert the student area into more of this style, the typical atelier look. Long sheets of printing paper a student gave me a pile of over 20 years ago for testing strokes, colors, and ideas cover the tables. Its set up provides an open invitation to paint or draw.

“Draw” in both senses of the word, and draw, it does. As soon as we open the door, Colby runs to her place, pulls out her comfie chair and gets started. I find her watercolor paper, and pour out the tins of watercolor colored pencils all over the table. Generosity is the operative word here. I don’t mete out 2 or 3 pencils, I pour out the pencils. Anything a child gets must excite their imagination early on, or you’ve lost your window of opportunity.

Soon she is lost in the process and down under for the duration of the morning. Concentrating? I couldn’t pull her from it if I wanted to! One morning she was busy decorating flowers, using the colors to make a border, and so I took photos of her to paint the portrait of her later. I captured not some artificial setup of a photographer, but a creative child in her native habitat, a portrait of Colby I entitled, “Colby at Art.” My framer commented on the difference in my portrait of her as he was framing the work. “You didn’t just put two or three pencils there like most artists would. The pencils are all over the place, and that’s how a child would like it!”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

My son’s family owns the painting, of course, which I entered into one of my list of major art shows. And at my studio it displayed as an example of the portrait I could create for you of your child, lost in the activity or thought most native to him or her. I love the way Colby fills and borders the page, her hair dripping down over her eyes into the left frame, her intent expression of face filling the topmost edge, her shoulder the right side, and her arm reaching forward on the bottom edge, leaving just a small opening that isn’t her. I imagine this as the childhood opening which brings in a whole delightful world of art.

A world full of welcome, opportunity, new ideas, and love–a place where students can come and go–return and learn, and test their growing skills.

Southern Watercolor Society’s 37th Annual in Kerrville, TX

“With great joy” the Southern Watercolor Society, an 18-state regional, which includes Washington, D.C., informed me they have selected Crab-Net for inclusion into their 37th Annual Exhibit to be held at the Kerr Arts and Cultural Center (KACC), in Kerrville, TX.

Linda A. Doll, aws, nws is a painter, digital photographer, graphic artist, instructor and the juror of choice for the Society’s show. A teacher of workshops and seminars throughout the US, Mexico, Canada, France, Italy, Greece, Spain, Ireland and Bali, she is President (2012-2014), a Past-President and Life Member of the National Watercolor Society, a Past Board  Member and Juror of the American Watercolor Society, and a past Board Member of Watercolor West. She is a Life Honorary Member of the Federation of Canadian Artists and an Elected Life Member of the San Diego Watercolor Society. Her paintings and drawings are included in many books and have been used by several magazines for their covers. Linda is included in many Who’s Who Publications, including Who’s Who in American Art and Who’s Who of American Women.

People and Still Life Subjects that hint at the person just outside the picture plane are Linda’s favorite painting subjects. Perhaps my Crab-Net told a tale in negative blocks of color and circular bits of string that included the people lurking just outside the net who had caught the crabs pictured inside the net. Perhaps she sensed them relishing the moment and thinking about the seafood meal to come.

In any case, this watercolor painting of N.C. blue crabs came to Linda Doll’s attention and is one of the only 80 paintings, with 5 alternates, that she picked out of 362 submissions from 18 states and D.C to form the 37th Annual Exhibition for 2014. Lucky me!  This painting, a 29 x 37, was a fun subject, product of a fun day, about a fun sea life, crab, and using a fun medium,  watercolor. For all that, it was one of the most intricate and difficult of my paintings, involving a lot of struggle in the painting. I love negative space, weaving, and the sensational  blues which reverberate in the beautiful N.C. crabs. This painting was like a weaving within a weaving. Add to it a tangle of emotional struggles which I sometimes encounter when I take professional vacations, and you have what was a life journey untangling from the crab net.

Once I began, I kept seeing emerging patterns,  so I would re-do the drawing to include the new pattern. One was the radiant vortex of the simple trap. The subject emerged enmeshed in spirals of knotted twine which revealed as many holes in the net as it did crabs. Such a simple thing, string, to outmaneuver cranky crabs. It reminds me of a recent story of a whale entangled in multiple nets that rescuers released from the string prison. A sea mammal showed undying gratitude to each rescuer in turn–such a touching display.

Crab-Net is my most recent watercolor, and has hardly been let out the door, but it did visit the Arts of the Albemarle in Elizabeth City in one of their shows. It is part of a new series of paintings I am doing that involve the sea in some aspect. I call this new series “Sea-Escapes by Joanna. ” https://joriginals.net/product-category/sea-escapes/ Sea-Escapes can take you to a pier on  a July day where the crab pots are collecting piles of crabs, fishermen are fishing, and I learn how to crab–well, kinda, sorta. And the harvest of NC blue crabs turns into one of the funniest and simultaneously most beautiful piles of color in a painting.

Measuring the crab against one slat of the pier to determine if the crab was a ‘keeper’ or a ‘throw-back-in-er’ was one of the tips I learned. And scampering away fast so a loosed crab wouldn’t pinch a toe was a newly acquired skill, as well, and could well turn into a life lesson. What I took home with me was a stomach full of delicious white crabmeat dipped in butter and my own photos to work from on a watercolor which netted me the painting, Crab-Net, white string spiraling to a vortex over a circular metal loop, holding a complexity of colors and shapes that for me are pure visual escapes.

As for me, I am fully planning on attending the exhibit, as I did a couple of times in the past when my painting was included before, enjoy the members’ luncheon, the reception ceremony where I meet members from all over who are extremely friendly and rub professional shoulders. We may even visit family and friends while we are there on April 12th. I am one of the Southern Watercolor Society’s signature members, which means I get to sign my name, and add their initials afterward, SW.

Of course I will leave my picture through the duration of the exhibit which ends April 28, at which point, I will hopefully be in Washington, D.C. at the the Portrait Society of America’s Annual Exhibition, enjoying another topnotch show that expands horizons.

Such chances don’t come every day.

There comes a time in the life of every artist when she needs a shake-up.

When a still life no longer thrills, landscapes bore, and faces no longer challenge, a power surge is needed.

Sea-Escapes is that power surge, a series jump started when my website manager Jim Gruber shared the most beautiful photographs of surfs on the web that I had ever seen. In fact, I had never seen surfs at all, in photos or out, if one could believe that of an N.C. native who grew up visiting Carolina beach for summer vacations.

All I’d ever seen of seascapes were paintings of water breaking over rocks, boats a-float or being sunk at sea, or what I would call beach landscapes containing three flat parallel lines where sky met sea and waves broke in orderly rows from my perch on the sand.

Imagine my artist’s eye overcome by the sheer novelty of form in these surfing photos. I had no idea the water shaped itself into such weird and wonderful contortions, random sprays and splashes. I was amazed at the new shapes water took on, fascinated by the compositions anything but straight-lined.

Embryonic curls screamed abandon, enthusiasm. Their wildness erased the dust from the everyday objects I had worked at painting, infused the mundane, picayune with fairy dust, and spiked the ho-hum out of a day’s routine.

I never saw the ocean act up in such ways–the wind, tides and water forces from below causing funnels, tunnels, gigantic waves, circular sweeps of water turning in on themselves, cascading down a line or from high overhead, and shorelines viewed through a bull’s eye opening.

Surges of color followed the unexpected forms, color almost unnatural in its intensity—neon greens, yellows, golds, snowy whites and baby blues, purples, blue-blacks, reds and carmines—the range stymies the mind. I mean, everyone knows water is blue or blue-green or aqua, right? Wrong. Light changes everything.

Viewing surf photographs inland was a real trip in itself.

An ardent surfer originally from California, Jim’s descriptions of bone-breaking experiences as a surfer horrified me, while his love of the ocean re-sparked my own fascination with beach life and nostalgic scenes of my earlier beach vacations.

So from another shore, the tide washed in with its mystique, its loud, crashing noises, and its calming effects. The sea sucked me out to it, made me break my routine, escape the ordinary.

Escape. There was that word again. Escape to the sea.

Some of my happiest memories were of playing in the sunshine as a child, digging my toes into white beach sand, swimming in sea waters, building sandcastles with a plastic bucket, walking the pilgrimage along water’s edge in the hot sun and in the raging sunset. What child hasn’t had the sound of the sea introduced to her and magically reverberate in a conch shell held up to her ear? Even dead shells have memory.

Some families are mountain vacationers, some beach, but we were both—split equally between the two. Our small family grew when we convened at the beach and met extended family. From collecting arrowheads in the fields at home to collecting conch shells on the beach, the switch was effortless.

The shells’ delicate pastel colors contrasted with the electric colors the sea took on in different light, the raw intensity of the green, the blue, and the mixing patterns.

My twin loves in painting, composition and color, met with a fierce attraction in the sea and birthed the new series. Instead of Seascapes as a genre, we have Joanna McKethan Sea-Escapes. My eye joined the forms of emergent shells to raging sea, and the colors of a fairly extensive collection of shells of mine coalesced with surf photos.

I introduced a single, small shell, a microcosm, back to the macrocosm in which it grew: Mother Sea.

So the first painting, “Sea’s Restless Eve,” shows the water spilling over an uplifted shell in blacks, phthalocyanine blues and red sunset colors.

“Castaway Shell” lies beached in yellows and golds, the folds of water still surrounding it, not quite able to completely let it go, the impastos sticking out to catch the light, the antique tones of Old Masters’ colors deepening shadow areas to pop the light and the stepping-stone spires of the shell.

‘Seascapes’ is the painting term used for a depiction of the sea.

But the series includes more than seascapes or my shell-and-sea idea which will yield similar paintings to the two just mentioned. Sea-Escapes can create a salty trail back to land where a former whale oil container, an antique from the days of harvesting sperm whales was found, and so, the painting of an antique, a harpoon and a net, “Sperm Whale Antique”  becomes a historical commentary on a way of life and a movement to save the whales.

Sea-Escapes can mean an old man sitting beside the sea on a porch with a net hanging behind him, as in the watercolor, “Dockside.”  Sea-Escapes can take you to a pier with me where the crab pots are catching piles of crabs, and I learn how to crab on one of the most fun days of hard labor I’ve done in years. And the harvest of NC blue crabs turns into one of the funniest and simultaneously most beautiful piles of color in a painting I have yet to experience: “Crab-Net.”

Measuring the crab against one slat of the pier to determine if the crab was a ‘keeper’ or a ‘throw-back-in-er’ was one of the tips I learned.

And scampering away fast so a loosed crab wouldn’t pinch a toe was a newly learned skill, as well. What I took home with me was a stomach full of delicious white crabmeat dipped in butter and my own photos to work from on a watercolor, Crab-Net, which netted me a painting of white string spiraling to a vortex and holding a complexity of colors and shapes that for me are pure visual escapes.

Single shells have always inspired me, and I have painted some 40-50 small shells in watercolors and oils that have sold or that I have given as presents to special people on special occasions.

What lies ahead for the series? Why, foreign Sea-Escapes will emerge as a sub-series, and sunsets at the beach, another; boats, of course, and boat wheels, maybe even birds, and rusty nails, anchors, what not. It is a series designed for fun.

I don’t anticipate strapping myself to the prow of a boat like Turner, the famous English watercolorist, did in order to paint an impending storm. Nor can I see myself with a 500-pound mega-expensive camera strapped around these painting shoulders to take surfing shots like ‘real’ artists are supposed to do to generate their own ‘source’ material.

So I’m left with detective work, extrapolating and blending, learning the nature of surfs by multiple views and though generated visions of what is possible.

However, Sea-Escapes promise to keep me and my viewers in the salty sea waters, yielding hours of pleasurable sensations, evoking the wonderful memories of vacation days and family fun.

Welcome to my world. Color that looks wet, air smelling salty, and subjects designed to bring the escape home with you as far inland as you need to travel.

Art Student Austin Risner Garrett

Austin Travels with Delegates of People to People Ambassador Program

            Some students have all the good fortune. Austin Risner Garrett appears to be one of those. At 15 years old, as a Sophomore at Triton High School, Austin has already been to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Ireland, Scotland, England, Italy, Vatican City, Luxembourg, Czech Republic, France, and Canada. Now he’s getting the chance to do it all over again—well, not all of it, but at least a few of these countries, e.g., Switzerland, Austria, and France.

How did he get to travel so extensively before? That was courtesy of the U.S. military where his father, Paul Garrett, worked with and retired from the military, in particular, the Airborne. His mother Mia Garrett now works for the military base at Fort Bragg. They have lived in Nebraska, Angier, and now live in Dunn.

How did Austin win the honor of representing Harnett County in this program? Austin is one of those students who is all-round, smart at everything. However, he was pre-selected and nominated anonymously by a teacher, along with four other nominees from other areas.

He then received a flyer in the mail that encouraged him to register to attend a seminar on eligibility. Austin went to the seminar and chose the delegation he wanted to attend with from North Carolina. Austin knows of one other delegation from Charlotte. Adults pick the students they believe qualified to go on. Austin, along with four other students from other areas, was then interviewed. That very night he found out that he and the other four were accepted to participate in the program. Austin is the only one picked from the Harnett area.

Austin leaves in June, flying from Chicago to Rome and Florence in Italy, after which he will spend several days in Switzerland and France, as well. The delegation will lodge in hotel rooms except for the three days he will spend with a host family in Austria.

Not that it was all that easy. To accomplish the goal of the opportunity offered him, he applied for and won a scholarship, Austin had to write and submit a 2000-word essay. He did that and won a $500 People to People Ambassador Program Scholarship. He won an additional $1000 scholarship from the Ambassador Program by competing in trivia answering on Twitter.

He is now selling to help his family by earning spending money.

Austin is now working on finishing a full-sheet watercolor collage of five different famous buildings in various countries with the Ambassador’s emblem in the middle. His watercolor work is excellent. “Austin is a natural at watercolor painting,” Joanna McKethan, his teacher who owns in Dunn, says. He takes to it “like a duck to water. Having said that, I’ve taught him a lot as well—how to make quality strokes, how to make thin lines, how to mix colors, and move seamlessly from one color to another, to name a few skills.”

This large painting will be only Austin’s third watercolor ever completed. After it is matted and framed, it will be approximately 29” x 36”. Austin chose to do the painting for a project fair for which each delegate presents his own display of culture from other countries.  He believes his will be the only original art work there. Some have Austrian dishes, a tri-fold of information, a power point presentation., but, says Austin, “I’m entering a painting.”

The painting has vivid colors and loose washes and includes the Eiffel Tower in France, gondolas and the leaning tower of Pisa in Italy, and the Alps in Switzerland. His painting has taken three months to complete and is just one more example of his excellence. Austin is a frequent actor in plays put on by Harnett Regional Theater, as well.

What is the People to People Ambassador Program? The People to People Movement was launched in 1956 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower who firmly believed that peaceful relations between nations require mutual respect between individuals within the different countries. The People to People Ambassador Programs has served for 50 years as the “international global educational travel provider, organizing and promoting opportunities for bridging cultural and political borders through direct interaction, unparalleled access, and unique experiences.”

Today it travels to every continent on the globe and offers programs for students, educators, and professionals and boasts a legacy of White House support which includes the Bushes, Johnson, Kennedy, and Ford, and is as varied in its outreach as the individuals who offer their unique gifts.

Austin Garrett will decidedly make his own mark, and a large community that includes his parents, his school, teachers, and definitely his after school hour art teacher, Joanna McKethan, support his trip and believe he will make an excellent ambassador of peace.

Bon voyage, Austin!

Austin has returned from his trip and is finishing school at Triton in Dunn, NC.

JOANNA MCKETHAN EXHIBITS IN
WSNC 1st SIGNATURE MEMBER SHOW
Watercolor Society of North Carolina Presents
at CCA, Kinston, in their Hampton Gallery
March 28 – June 23, 2012

In an invitational exhibit sponsored by the Watercolor Society of North Carolina for its signature members, Joanna McKethan, SW, WSNC, exhibited two watercolor paintings to hang with the organization in the Hampton Gallery of the CCA in Kinston, from March 28-June 23rd, 2012. The Kinston facility is one of the largest galleries in the state.

Celebrated as the “best of the best,” The Arts Center at 400 North Queen Street in Kinston held the WSNC’s Signature Members’ Exhibit. With its inaugural showing, the society hopes to encourage more watercolorists to join the organization to reach this level of achievement.

The WSNC has approximately 100 Signature Members, all of whom were invited to participate without restriction on the year of execution of their work. They were restricted to work done in water media only.

WSNC is a non-profit art organization whose purpose is to promote watercolor throughout the state and to elevate the standards of excellence in this medium.

A “signature member” has achieved a status which allows the awarded member to use the initials of the accrediting society after his or her name in all advertisements of their painting credentials. Signature membership status is awarded by painting organizations using differing standards to qualify members who excel in one way or another.

WSNC’s excellence guidelines are, as quoted in their brochure, “WSNC Signature Membership is merited by members who win two first through fifth place awards in two separate annual statewide WSNC exhibitions after February 1999.” Since 2002, the status may also be obtained by acceptance of an artist’s entry into three separate annual statewide WSNC exhibitions. Once an artist has begun qualification under either method, “membership in WSNC and payment of annual dues must be continuous to be eligible for and retain Signature Membership status.”

Only Signature Members are entitled to use the initials “WSNC” after their names.
Joanna McKethan, SW, WSNC, had two paintings hang in the Kinston show, the “WSNC Signature Members Exhibit.”
Her full sheet painting, “Paper Trail,” in yellows, pinks, and antique golds, is a trompe l’oeil painted like a collage of gathered letters from loved ones in the poignant past, assembled in random style. Hand-made papers bear holes in them, and other still-life memorabilia of age accompany them. The written words are only partially readable, some showing through the holes; some unhindered.

Painted versions of fallen leaves and seedpods are strewn through the old letters randomly, influenced as much by chiaroscuro as possible to render them lifelike, as though you could pick them up.
An artist friend’s tiny paper booklets were models used in painting, as well. She met this friend at the artist’s retreat at Mt. St. Francis in Indiana, for two weeks over five summers, completing works of art. Some of their working concepts overlapped, in symbols of leaf on leaf and pages from books. Mt. St. Francis no longer uses its house or artist’s center for invited artists with the arts council.

“Paper Trail” was shown in the Southern Watercolor Society’s show, the SW being a regional watercolor society in the Southeast, 18 states including Washington, D.C., of which Ms. McKethan is also a signature member.

The rivulets of color represent the passage of life, the seasons; the stamped letters are destinations reached. Ancestors who found each other who became bearers of my life, the overlapping pages indicate links in generational chains. The leaves are scarred by their journey, with ragged edges like the edges of handmade (deckled) paper. The paper with its holes and stains is folded in ways of happenstance, as when the reader, perhaps in a hurry, creased the paper to fit it into a book to save. Though it bears the marks of rough handling, it is intact, sturdy, and still pliable.

Totally transparent watercolor in a collage style is one of the recurring threads in Ms. McKethan’s work, represented in her second piece as well, “A Rose Is a Rose,” which has a photograph of her mother, and a single rose laid over that ’photograph’ which rests beside the old, stained, handwritten letters.

Created entirely with paint, the theme is melancholic and depicts the artist’s mother before she was married. Layering is a favored technique used by Ms. McKethan. A difficult art, she says, since you must leave portions of the paper free of color, all the way down to the very first washes. For vibrancy, she avoids flushing the paper with all three primary colors, since that produces a grey undertone. She leaves out blue for the light side, utilizing only gold-toned colors, while the dark side which must contain the blue (and less yellow, except for making green). This sharpens contrast when the two meet, and allows the light side to emerge much more brightly.

“People forget that grey forms immediately when you have all three colors,” she confides a teaching secret with us. “Used well, one avoids mixing mud, but used poorly, all the colors look alike or end up tired and muddy, producing an inferior watercolor.”

Particularities were disguised enough to make the pieces tell anyone’s story. Other similar works bear exact personal information. Collectors do not seem to mind possessing paintings with names outside their own families.

“In a sense my history becomes yours when you acquire the painting,” the artist says, “and the threads of history are passed on.”

”The only bad watercolors are those which are tired (overworked) and too thirsty (dry),” said my Polish watercolor teacher in Munich, Germany, who taught me classical techniques of watercolor at the outset.
And I agree with him whole-heartedly.

“Mud is just a bad brown. Mixing all three primary colors produces a neutral—either a warm or a cold neutral—brown or black, tan or grey. Show me your mud, and I can diagnose what color you need to add to pull it out of the mud-puddle and bounce it back in any color direction you want it to go. Stick with me and I’ll teach you my color system, which fool proofs you from mud.”

And then it will leave a lovely color trail on paper.

IN FIRST SHOW TOGETHER

Watercolor Society of North Carolina Presents at CCA, Kinston

Exhibits at the Arts Center

Hampton Gallery, From the Director

What is a “signature member”?  Signature membership is a status which painting organizations award certain members who excel in one way or another, which then allows that member to use the initials after their name in all advertisements of their painting credentials.

For WSNC, from their brochure, “WSNC Signature Membership is merited by members who win two first through fifth place awards in two, separate annual statewide WSNC exhibitions after February 1999.  Effective July 2002, a second method of obtaining Signature Membership is acceptance of an artist’s entry into three separate annual statewide WSNC exhibitions.  Once an artist has begun qualification under either method, membership in WSNC and payment of annual dues must be continuous to be eligible for and retain Signature Membership status.  Only Signature Members are entitled to use the initials “WSNC” after their names on any painting in water media.

Joanna McKethan, SW, WSNC, has two paintings hanging in the Kinston show, the “WSNC Signature Members Exhibit.”

Her first painting, full sheet, is “Paper Trail,” which gathers poignant letters from loved ones in the past and assembles them in random style among hand-made papers with holes in them, and other still-life memorabilia. The written words are only partially readable, some showing through the holes; some unhindered.

Fallen leaves and seedpods are strewn through the other leaves randomly, with as much influence of chiaroscuro as possible to make the fallen leaves lifelike, as though you could pick them up. Some of her artist friend’s tiny paper booklets were used as a model for painting, as well. She met this friend who, like her, spent time at the artist’s retreat at Mt. St. Francis in Indiana, for two weeks several summers, completing works of art. The symbolism of leaf on leaf is patently obvious, so it will not be labored. This painting was shown in Southern Watercolor Society’s show, of which Ms. McKethan is also a signature member.

The rivulets of color represent the passage of life, the seasons; the stamped letters are destinations reached and people find each other who became bearers of my life, the pages overlapping indicate the links in generational chains. The leaves are scarred by their journey, with ragged edges like the edges of handmade (deckled) paper, holes, stains, folded in strange ways when the holder, perhaps in a hurry, creased the paper to fit in a book to save. Though it bears the marks of rough handling, it is intact, sturdy, and still pliable.

The randomness is part of the one-hundred-percent transparent watercolor, collage style look in Ms. McKethan’s work, represented in her second piece as well, “A Rose Is a Rose,” which has a photograph of her mother, and a single rose laid over old, stained, handwritten letters. Although they look like collages, the effect is created entirely with paint. This painting is a sad one, a poetic work on the artist’s mother before she was married. Again, a connection is sought after in this painting of overlapping life elements.

Many of the elements are disguised enough to make the pieces anyone’s story. I have been criticized for that, but I have been criticized for the specificity of the information of others. One of my good friends Sandra Mowery owns a full sheet painting with my ancestry clearly designated in it, right down to my great grandfather’s framed photograph holding the bayoneted rifle in his hand.

“In a sense my history becomes yours when you acquire the painting,” she says, “and the threads of history are passed on.”

Ms. McKethan uses layering as a favorite technique. Layering is a difficult art, she says, since you must leave portions of the paper free of color, all the way down to the very first washes. For vibrancy, she avoids the flushing of the paper with all three primaries as a way to make an all-over grey tone. She prefers to leave the light side only for gold-toned colors (leaving one of the triad out) and a dark side which must contain the blue (and less of any yellow, except for making green. This sharpens contrast when the two meet.

“People forget that grey forms immediately when you have all three colors,” she confides a teaching secret with us. “Used well, one avoids mixing mud, but used poorly, all the colors look alike or end up tired and muddy.”

“Weak, tired and muddy are the only types of bad watercolors,” my Polish watercolor teacher in Munich, Germany, taught me at the outset.

And I agree with him whole-heartedly. I would add, “mud is what you get when you were trying to mix something else.” And I would add, “when you mix the right colors together, if you mix all three, you get a neutral—either a warm neutral or a cold neutral—brown or black, tan or grey. And if I see your mud, I can tell you what color to add right away to pull it back from the mud-puddle and take it any direction you want it to go. If you stick with me a bit longer, I’ll teach you enough about my system of color that you can find the right color yourself.”

She smiled and laid her brush down.