Why watercolor?
I didn’t know it at the time, but my life was about to change the first time I loaded a brush with a colorful wash and spread it across a thirsty piece of watercolor paper. Mixing colorful pigments in water, spreading them across a white page, manipulating them a bit, then allowing them to dry felt familiar and natural from the first time I tried it. This should have been no surprise—water has played almost as important of a roll in my life as art. My earliest memories are of the sounds of water lapping against the hull of a boat, I grew up sailing my own Sunfish sailboat, and I love almost anything you can do in or around a lake, river, or other body of water.
I was motivated to pick up watercolor because I had fallen in love with watercolor paintings. The luminosity had more to do with it than anything else, but the way that you could see how different colors mixed and mingled on the page as the water dried was a very close second. I also enjoy the unique challenges that watercolor offers. Timing is everything and you have to know how to work with the way water behaves, which is unlike any other medium.
My paintings explore a wide range of subjects. I was lucky enough to be born and (mostly) raised in central North Carolina, where The Appalachian Mountains are just to my west and the Atlantic Ocean is just a little farther to the east. I love to visit both, and it shows in my work. Birdwatching is another passion of mine, and I enjoy bringing my avian friends to life in my paintings. Most recently, I have also developed an interest in painting people, which has also led to a few cityscapes. Humans are interesting, and there are limitless ways that we express ourselves through body language and expressions. Capturing those gestures and telling a story with my artwork is a new challenge and something I want to continue to explore.
