I have spent the last several years seriously studying watercolor. My strongest tendency in painting is toward a realistic style but my desire is to achieve looser interpretations. Ideally, my focus in painting is to render “how I see” instead of “what I see”, that is, to paint the thing not as that thing I know or recognize but, instead, to allow for the interpretations my mind conjures and have those to appear on the paper. The juxtaposition of that placement, the real vs. the imagined, is troublesome. It is challenging for me to overcome what my eyes are telling me with my imagination wants to construe. It is a constant battle.
From the viewers’ perspective I am always surprised by the emotions or story they find conveyed in my work. How they interpret the image, or how they perceive the circumstance of the work as it was being done surprises me. How it happens that they are allowed to witness my tempo, my mood, or other circumstances that existed during the timeframe of the creation of the artwork eludes me. Their storytelling about me and/or my art is always fascinating.
More often than not I am confounded by my own finished artwork, as to how I painted it especially if some time has elapsed.
I could never make the same painting twice. It would be like reliving a moment—impossible!
I am currently the president ex-officio of the Watercolor Society of North Carolina.