GUILD OF ARTISTS
Wild Over Watercolor
WOW! Gallery
MEET OUR ARTISTS
Shelley Greer
Jeannine Miller
Michelle Myers
Linda Chatfield
Sue Wheeler
Terry Witter
Light Through the Trees
Auboretum Tractor
Watercolor has presented itself as an interesting journey for Terry from the why and how to the what and who. Before coming to the medium, he taught science classes to high schoolers. Perhaps that orientation guided his early investigative study of the paint and its various reactions on the paper when interacting with other paint and water and incidentals like salt! Terry says, “Watercolor can be such a big mystery when you first start, but for me, the joy has been in letting it go and letting the watercolor do its thing. Painting looser! The holy grail of watercolor.” Terry also likes painting his favorite places and things that trigger fond memories from family.
Nola Pear
High Waters
Meditation
Nola is an award-winning artist who likes to paint botanicals and landscapes which invite your eye into her artwork and to roam around there awhile, enjoying the colors and textures in her subjects. She enjoys experimenting with techniques that push the medium and capture the beauty nature offers. To wit, she now marbles a great many of her paintings and then paints on them some more. The unexpected results of this process are delightful and gorgeous. Her goal is to get you to slow down and witness the magnificence of creation.
Ann Beckmann
Agate Mountain
A Snowy Evening
When people comment on her artwork, they regularly mention how Ann’s color choices create a certain contented and playful spirit. She paints places and animals and still-life works. Ann is endlessly experimenting with her paints and her process to see what will happen. She says, “The learning never ends when it comes to art and finding creative ways to express yourself and that is a very satisfying thing for me.”
Dianne Hicks
San Juan Island
Elimira
Mesmerized by color she was young, Dianne looked at the world around her and, in seeing beauty everywhere, wanted to recreate it through art. She chooses subjects from everyday life, ranging from still life, and flowers to animals, people, food, and landscapes. Having background in graphic design, Dianne can see the possibilities, when viewing a scene or photo, of it becoming a balanced painting that tells a story, or creates a theme or feeling. While emphasizing soft hues and creating an atmospheric perspective, she enhances her pictures with negative painting contrasted by subtle colors and lost edges in the background. Her style is semi-realistic, and her paintings in art shows draw viewers.
Angela Wrahtz
Tatoo'd by Light
Pears
Angela is an award-winning artist who begins with watercolor paints and integrates, usually, other media like ink or marbling, to make things interesting. She likes to explore the possibilities of pattern and texture to enhance her subjects. She paints still life subjects, landscapes, and people. Bold colors and a loose expressive style characterize her work. Recently, she incorporates more and more acrylic marbling as an unexpected feature in her works.
Jacelen Pearson
Down Deep
Skeleton Leaf
After retiring from a career as a professional designer and illustrator, Jacie is painting in watercolor again and doing what she loves most, exploring the rich details and textures of nature. Her goal is to engage the viewer to see the defining attributes and gorgeous particulars of everyday places and things. An award winning artist, she says: "So much beauty resides in small details that catch highlights or peek out from the shadows and are otherwise overlooked." Her favorite subjects include rusty and old wooden surfaces, but her interests are broad. Recently she has painted numerous intriguing marbled works incorporating coastal and sea creature themes.
Karen Berg
Yaquina Lighthouse
Rose Glow
Karen loves working with watercolors! Whether painting florals, landscapes, animals, or still life, she displays her subjects with a mind to realism. Her focus is on depth and details while creatively displaying rich colors and soft hues. She works to capture edges, curves, and angularities that are caught in the light and shadows. As a lifelong gardener who loves nature and growing roses, she delights in using watercolor transparencies and refined glazing techniques to achieve delicate blends and varied textures in her paintings, resulting in a softness and glow to her artwork.
Barbara Weeks
I'm Watching You
Before the Day Breaks
Barbara paints from the heart, because a deep connection to her subject is essential to her motivation in painting it. This connection to the subject is more important to her than anything else. To that end, she works hard to use techniques that will help her accurately portray her subject. Detail is very important since it is the conduit to the story and is the feeling she wishes to express. You might say, she wants to share the feeling she has for her subject with you as much as a true rendering of it.
James Grady
Pears
Rocky Shores
A lifelong artist and photographer, Jim is inspired by the grandness of nature as expressed in sweeping landscapes. While he paints all kinds of subject matter, his current interest is to capture the bigness, the boldness, and the beauty of geologically stunning places that he has visited. He wants to paint these locations with a slightly abstracted realism. Composition is important to Jim, and his paintings always incorporate an understructure that makes each painting sing. Color and light are also priorities.
Sue Traeger
Lulu the Wonder Dog
Swan Island Dahlia
Sue paints for fun! She says, “I love color and textural embellishments. I paint flora and fauna with not too much detail.” People respond to her cheerful shapes and palette and recognize in them a modern style. She especially likes to paint from her husband’s wildlife photography because his pictures always tell a story. Sue says, “Because there is so much to this rich medium, I am a forever student of watercolor!”
Terry Schmidt
Story Time
Jellyfish
Terry comes to art from a career as a science teacher. From her background in science and her careful observations of nature with her father, a physicist, she looks deeply into objects seeking pattern and structure. Translating that into artwork that reveals hidden forms and colors is an endlessly interesting and surprising endeavor for her. Recently, she has begun to incorporate marbling into her creative process which enhances and adds mystery to her uniqiue perception of her subjects.
Rebecca Lockwood
Steamin' Pink, circa 2099
Musings of a Feline
Rebecca is an artist who brings a strong individual voice to her work. Her subjects may be familiar but her approach to them has a interesting twist and a bit of humor underneath it all. A hallmark of Rebecca's work is her use of predominantly shadowy blacks, greys, and browns providing a dramaric gothic mood. Rebecca is an artist who works in many mediums. Her jewelry is available for viewing at basillarose.com.
Virginia Green
Girl with a Guitar
Swan Lake
Virginia Green is an accomplished watercolor artist with a very delicate style. She has been painting her entire adult life. She likes to paint people and tries to tell their story with a minimum of brush strokes. There is movement in every painting.
Marjorie Fellows
Cats in a Bubble
Falling in Love
Marjorie’s artwork is inspired by: places she has traveled to, objects and creatures that inhabit her life, and photographs of intriguing landscapes. She is excited by color and thoughtful about detail. At the end of her process, she finds there is an almost unintentional whimsy that expresses itself in her artwork. She paints for joy and as a way to give authentic gifts to people she loves.
Robin Lutgert
Not your iPod
Chip and Gus
Robin is inspired by all kinds of subject matter and approaches her artwork with a refined drawing before rendering with paint. Her work is realistic, crisp, and full of personality because of the combination of materials she uses. She will often paint a subject on a page from a dictionary or book that discusses that subject. The printed words in the background present another layer of meaning and are reminiscent of illuminated texts from days gone by. Fine detail is a hallmark of her work.
Kevin Lane
Kendall
Morning Sun
Kevin paints all subjects but is recently most intrigued with faces and figures. Having hiked and kayaked in hard-to-reach places with fellow travelers, he draws from his photographs to create exciting visual records of the people and places of his adventures. Like all good artists, Kevin wrestles with the essence of the work and finds himself surrounded by numerous thumbnail sketches and initial attempts at a painting before arriving at the one that pleases him. His seriousness about preparation leads to many, many intriguing sketches and drafts which are often as exciting as the final work.
Debbie Hornibrook
It's A Glorious Day!
What's the Latest?
Debbie is an award-winning wildlife artist who works in watercolor, colored pencil, and ink. Her favorite subjects are woodland and wild creatures whom she features in colorful, whimsical, and detailed narratives that suggest a plot, a gentle drama, and a happy ending. Recently, her work leans more toward mixed media with her watercolors being complimented and layered with acrylic marbling. She is also currently collaborating on a children’s book which will include her touching illustrations.
Celia Wulff
Stained Glass
Winter Pause
Celia enjoys painting wildlife inside beautiful landscapes. A deer in the forest or a fox howling at the moon at midnight are the kinds of subjects that inspire her. She uses color and details to capture her nature themes, and because she loves nature and hiking, you might say that she paints places where she finds herself wandering and reflecting. Celia has recently added marbling to her range of techniques.
Bob Curtis
Winter Pond
Bob finds inspiration in landscapes and gives depth and mood to his paintings by mostly working with a limited palette. In some paintings, he uses only one red, one yellow, and one blue (called a triad) but nevertheless achieves a range of color and tone across the spectrum to suit his subject. It is something of a challenge to accomplish this! When Bob isn’t painting, he is carving interesting woodland creatures and characters and their intricate forest habitats.
Connie Abell
Wildfire
Fox on the Hunt
Connie gets lost in Oregon nature. "It just takes my breath away! By painting from my own photos, I can get into every crevice and nuance and let my memory of the time and space take over." From glowing landscapes to bold wildlife portraits, Connie shows not only her love of nature but her love of color, lines, and shapes resulting in striking watercolor paintings and making you want to go outside to explore the wilderness yourself.