CHAPTER THREE:
GALLERY
THE ARTISTS SELECTED for the Water Paper Paint Gallery collectively capture the inimitable nature of watercolor. Each, through insight and talent, conveys his or her ideas with beauty, tenacity, mystery, and ingenuity. Some of the artists I knew prior to writing this book and others were discovered in the process. Each was chosen because I respect and admire his or her concept and aesthetic. These artists incorporate new media, collaborate with other artists, consider their paintings on a grand scale, and even develop new printmaking techniques to use with watercolor. The imagery, whether figurative or nonobjective, is sometimes familiar and yet unexpected. Watercolor itself is literally and metaphorically a transparent medium. As the viewer, we are at once aware of the paint’s beauty but also transported by the artists’ handling and overall arrangement. When you notice the tactility of the materials and then find yourself in the mind of the artist, beyond the tools themselves, these, to me, are signs that you are in presence of the finest kinds of paintings.
David Wilson, in his gestural, free-form representations of nature, is concerned with the notion of capturing and preserving fleeting moments. Floating small elements within a page, such as butterflies or a diminutive landscape, seem to be an act of preserving the passing of things. Where Wilson’s work is about capturing the essence of something, Andy Farkas seems intent on discovery. Farkas considers himself to be a storyteller and his work to be about the process of finding and telling life’s stories. He uses watery sweeps of color, written notations, and wood-block printing processes to weave together his ideas.
Many of Geninne Zlatkis’s well-known pieces include bird imagery, painted in profile, with delineated wings and feathers, and mingled with flora all about. Yet to me, it’s her journals that bear witness to her artistry. The richly layered pages embed life experience in every mark and word with depictions of the natural world at the heart. While Zlatkis’s work is illustrative and full of pattern, Margie Kuhn paints objects, manmade and from nature, in detailed likeness, in a way that fools the eye. In her paintings, she removes items from context to examine the objects on their own and in relation to other elements and environments. Leaves, postage stamps, postcards, old photographs, clippings, and even bits of tape become transformed through her brush and are glimpses into a world which seems much more vast.
Anna Hepler and Christine Kesler pursue art making in different media, including three-dimensions and on a broad scale. Hepler builds sculptural forms from wire and from pieces of sheet plastic. She inflates the plastic forms and then watches them slowly deflate over time. She draws from those forms, whether wire or plastic, in their various states of transformation. Her drawn work shows an understanding of light, shadow, and perceived space, as informed by her sculptures. Christine Kesler takes her paintings and considers them within a larger scale. She uses a regenerative process of working into her previous paintings and drawings in order to destroy and rebuild them into something new. She arranges and installs the pieces all over the walls, allows them to unfold in a corner, or touch the floor. These installations form associations and ultimately blur boundaries of a once chronological process.
Selected Works
A few of the chosen artists collaborate with other artists. Carrie Walker gathers the discarded drawings of unspecified artists; some from the nineteenth century. She paints creatures into the found and desolate scenes, bringing life to pieces of art that were otherwise overlooked. The collaborative duo of Gracia Haby, (a collage artist) and Louise Jennison, (a watercolorist), known as Gracia & Louise, create works of art, artists’ books, and zines. Lightly painted watercolors of jewels surround depicted images saturated with color, as if unearthed from history. Together they relay narratives of new and invented worlds. All of the artists delve into their imagination in one way or another, including Kyle Field, who through his imagery and color, reveals the inner workings of his mind. It is here, through his explorations, where we meet the unexpected and perhaps the unknown. His meandering lines feel at once automatic and lyrical and seem to marry the act of drawing with painting into one symbiotic process.
David Wilson
Moth Markings, (detail), watercolor on paper, 5 1/4″ x 8″ (13.3 x 20.3 cm).
Andy Farkas
Refresh, watercolor woodcut, 7″ x 13″ (17.8 x 33 cm).
“Each color in the print is a separate carved block and each is registered and printed using watercolor pigments and rice paste rather than oil-based inks.”
River Study 5, graphite and watercolor, 6″ x 6″ (15.2 x 15.2 cm).
River Study 6, graphite and watercolor, 7″ x 11″ (17.8 x 27.2 cm).
Carrie Walker
To While Away the Time, watercolor and pencil on found drawing, 6 1/2″ x 9 3/8″ (16.5 x 23.8 cm), 2008.
No Dominance Exists in the Coterie, watercolor on found painting, 3 1/2″ x 5″ (8.9 x 12.7 cm), 2008.
“For this series, I have been collecting old landscape drawings and watercolor paintings from various sources such as eBay and thrift stores. I then carefully draw or paint animals into the landscape. The animals I insert are out of context and out of scale with their environment, resulting in a fantastical narrative, a story half-told. I consider the work to be collaborative, albeit one-sided. This series was initially conceived after buying a sketchbook full of landscape drawings for twenty-five cents in a thrift store in Chilliwack, British Columbia.”
Margie Kuhn
American Sublime (detail), watercolor and gouache on paper, 23″ x 30″ (58.4 x 76.2 cm).
Course of the Empire: Comanche, watercolor on paper, 30″ x 22″ (76.2 x 55.9 cm).
Geninne D. Zlatkis
September Pages, watercolor and acrylic ink on the pages of the artist’s personal journal.
Three Little Birds, watercolor and acrylic ink on Fabriano paper.
Christine Kesler
I Got Lost, gouache, acrylic, watercolor, ink, and graphite on paper, 21″ x 30″ (53.3 x 76.2 cm), 2009.
The Construction of the World, acrylic, watercolor, and gouache on paper, 6″ x 9″ (15.2 x 22.9 cm), 2008.
Consonant, Installation detail shot. Mixed media on paper, panel, and canvas; site-specific installation, dimensions variable, 2009.
Anna Hepler
Small Cyprus Drawing, 009.
Small Cyprus Drawing, 021.
Small Cyprus Drawing, 023.
“Small watercolor and gouache studies on paper, loosely describing wire sculptural models from my studio, from 2007.”
Gracia Haby and Louise Jennison Detail from the artists’ book, This Evening, However, I am Thinking of Things Past; Twelve-page concertina, four-color lithographic offset print and color pencil on Fabriano bright white 300 gsm paper; Title page, watercolor and pencil on Fabriano bright white 640 gsm paper. housed in a 11″ x 9 5/8″ x 1″ (28 cm x 24.5 cm x 2.5 cm) balsa wood case with binding cloth bound by Louise Jennison; printed by Redwood Prints, edition of twelve, 2009.
Podlike Vessels, Abandoned But with Recent Modifications; detail from the artists’ book And We Stood Alone in the Silent Night; A full-color digital print A5, perfect bound artists’ book; 50 pages in length; 8 1/4″ x 5 3/4″ (21 x 14.7 cm); printed by Documents on Call, edition of fifty, 2008.
Kyle Field, ink and watercolor on paper, 28″ x 36″ (71.1 x 91.4 cm), 2008.
Hood’s Memory (Memory of a Hood), ink and watercolor on paper, 8 1/2″ x 11″. (21.6 x 27.9 cm), 2008.
Heather Smith Jones In the Sweet By and By, graphite and handmade watercolor on paper, image size 3 3/4″ x 5″ (9.5 x 12.7 cm), paper size 10″ x 11″. (25.4 x 27.9 cm).
7.11, graphite, handmade watercolor, acrylic, decals on paper, image size 6 3/4″ x 9″ (17.1 x 22.9 cm), paper size 11″ x 15″ (27.9 x 38.1 cm).