It may seem strange, but I’m in New York since 6 months and somehow have great difficulties finding exhibitions to visit and artists to study. One hurdle to visiting exhibitions is the price tag: Museum admission is 20$ on average, and student tariff typically only for US full time students. There’s friday with “pay what you want” admission, but this means waiting in long lines at the entrance and really crowded places. I became a Whitney Museum member when I visited the Edward Hopper Exhibition, this costs $80 but includes free admission to all exhibitions for an entire year. Unfortunately it’s only for this single museum, and current exhibitions seem to focus on modern American art in which I’m less interested. I’ll certainly explore the permanent exhibition in more depth in the weeks and months to come, but it means that I’ll have to do some research where I might view more traditional style artwork.
I already started to search Google for “American Painters” and have done some research on Georgia O’Keeffe in the context of my drawing blog, but I’m definitely lacking orientation in American art. So I had the idea of looking particularly for “American watercolour artists” to see what would come up. This was also with the intention of connecting to the place where I live now, and overcoming my own “Europe-centeredness”.
The American Watercolour Society
My first resource to explore was at the American Watercolour Society (AWS). Established in 1866, they’re holding an annual contest which is open for international contributors. The 147th Annual international exhibition will be in New York at the Salmagundi Club, New York City from April 1 – April 20, 2014, and I’ll certainly go visiting! As a note for myself: The exhibition CD is also available on microfiche and can be viewed in the New York Public Library, in Midtown: The New York Public Library, 42nd Street & Fifth Avenue, Room 106M, New York, New York 10018 (Phone: 212-930-0839)
After some browsing through the website, I finally discovered the 2013 selection online and the listing of 32 watercolour artists who have been awarded a price. Although I had the impression that most of the works were more or less naturalistic and realistic representation was a highly valued, the jury selected winners in a variety of styles. There are naturalistic, photorealistic, abstract, naïve and experimental works among the selection. I was glad about this because it makes me feel that there’s room for explorations into different directions in my own practice, I don’t have to focus on trying to paint as (photo-) realistic as possible.
It was very interesting to look through the works and observing my own responses. I liked some more and some less, but found they were all on a very high technical skill level. I selected five as my favourites, and from the remainder five more which evoked positive as well as negative responses, which I found helpful to locate myself in art space.
The image sizes on the website presentation were given without dimensions, so I was constantly wondering whether the typical size of 30 x 27 for paintings referred to cm (roughly A4 size) or inches (large format of around 75 x 67 cm). The Watercolour Society is a US association, so the dimension would naturally be inches, but I really don’t know whether I can assume that all these watercolours were in such large formats.
My five favourites
I cannot tell which one of the would be number 1, they are all very particular and I like them for different reasons.
Sandeep Chhatraband, Maharashtra India, Lamini Road (30 x 27)
I like this one for its colours and the lively atmosphere it creates. There are very fade blue tones in the distance and colour intensity increases towards the foreground. The street lights in their diminishing sizes also give hints about the space dimensions. The artist lives in India and this painting makes India come alive to me. At the same time, I find the painting style very British and would guess the painter had a British watercolour teacher or has studied art in Britain.
I was fascinated by the effect of the few orange, red and intense blue spots in the otherwise grey-brown tonality. I also like the sketchiness of the marks for details of houses, people and other objects. It looks like a very intuitive and fast painting and I admire this. Compared to my own work, I’m only beginning to discover the effects of watercolour and realize how much visual analysis is required to achieve the effect I want. I’d like to take on board how things are not pronounced in all their explicit detail, but suggested by little marks that bring across the pattern of light and shade.
George James, Costa Mesa CA, The Story of Mira (30 x 27)
This looks like several paintings in one, maybe it was a study from life with several views of the figure on the same sheet of paper. I like the sketchyness and imperfection and the transpareny of the colour layers. The soft rose and beige tones correspond well to the feminity of the figure, without going towards kitsch. I’d guess the painter has a background in professional illustration, because the style reminds me of what I’ve seen elsewhere in graphic design books.
John Salminen, Duluth MN, April in Central Park (36 x 36)
It’s difficult to tell the time of day in this painting, because there are so many dark colours, nevertheless there’s also a very intense light. I like the broken colours and again the sketchiness. The figures are separated by light contours from the background, this is something I’d like to master and incorporate in my own paintings. I also like how the trees are depicted. I think I mostly chose this one for its colours and living in New York, I can connect to New York locations as painting motifs. There’s also something about the atmosphere, people enjoying themselves in the city park.
Frank Webb, Pittsburgh PA, Boatyard (28 x 36)
I found this painting particularly interesting because of the simplicity of its forms. Certainly the original motif was full of complex tiny details and these have been cleared into basic forms of boats and the two people. I also like how the colours are mixing on the paper. I think this is a little masterpiece, capturing the idea of seaside and intense glazing sunlight. What I would like to take home is the simplifying view on complex objects.
Antonio Masi, Garden City NJ, Morning’s Work (40 x 26)
I love this one for the motif and again for the sketchyness in representation. I think this is depicting one of the huge steel bridges connecting the Manhattan Island to its neighborhood. Some of them are also subway transportation lines and I was enormously impressed by the heavy construction and the amount of steel used to build them. They must date from the Eiffelturm aera and for me, heavy steel construction is something very typical for New York. Then the yellow cabs which can be seen everywhere, they are almost as numerous as private cars in Manhattan. I like the colour contrast between the dark blue steel construction and the road against the yellow cabs and their red lights. I also like the sense of movement created by the blurriness of the upper railroad construction beams. So I think this is a very New Yorkish painting because it captures that speedy urban life thing.
Other works
Linda Baker, Charleston SC, Afternoon Breeze (22 x 22)
I found this painting interesting because of the motif. In the context of the Subject Choices Exercise, I had been reflecting on what is essential about the afternoon light and how a painting with “afternoon” in the title should capture something of this. My own photograph had been taken after noon, but the lighting did not really convey this.
Now this painting has something of the quality I thought about when referring to afternoon light. It might have been a late afternoon on a sunny day, and it is captured in the colours and the shapes of the light and shade areas.
Christine Krupinski, Fairfax VA, Lemons, Limes, and a Glass Bowl (30 x 22)
This painting made me speechless and perplexed because of the perfect photorealistic depiction. It is nothing I’m aspiring to master but I’m nevertheless intrigued that there are people who are actually able to paint an arrangement as if they were creating a photograph. My reservations with this are related to the question of where the personal voice and the particular artistic perception are. As I understand it, the idea of making art implies bringing out something personal and as such is different from the goal of replicating what a camera is able to do. So I’d rather not develop into this direction.
William Vrscak, Pittsburgh PA, The Alley (22 x 22)
This is a motif I like, it looks like a small town scene somewhere in the middle west of the United States, on a hot summer day. Technically I found the colour changes in the washes very interesting. For example, the green trees in the foreground and how they incorporate very light to very dark green tones. But also the different violet tones of the buildings to the right. As opposed to the street scene in India, the details of elements are painted rather than suggested.
After looking for some time at the painting, I realized that this must have been made from a photo which was slightly tilted to one side, because the vertical lines are not perpendicular to the ground. I’m quite sure that had the artist painted on the spot, the verticals would have been correct. I’m intrigued why the artist did not correct for the tilt in his photo source. It reminds me of one of the problematic aspects of using photos as a source for painting.
Elaine Bowers, Sacramento CA, Delta Reflections (22.25 x 22.25)
This picture caught me with its intense green tones and the unusual view from very high. The painting was probably also based on a photo source rather than just sketches and memory, maybe pictures shot from a helicopter or sailplane. The painting is very realistic and evokes personal memories of other vies from above on the pattern of fields, forests and occasional rivers.
I have some objections against the composition, because the section of the viewpoint feels too small. There’s nothing of the width of natural views on landscape in it – the vast sky, the extension of earth towards the horizon, the extreme loss of detail and colour intensity at the far distance. The image focus is on the S-curve of the river and accurate representation of colours, details and shades including the sky and tree reflections on the water surface, but for me, something very essential to landscape painting is missing.
Janet Campbell, Bloomingburg NY, Session Break (13.5 x 20)
I chose this one because I found the colour areas interesting, the contrast between the dark violet background tones and the yellow-orange upper clothing of the figure. I also like how how the white background contrasts to the upper silhouette of the figure.
I was wondering about the technique that was used for the linear elements of stool legs, it looks a bit like a resist technique. This must be an interesting painting to view in real.
Concluding remarks
I wasn’t aware of it while making the selection of my favourites, but I now realize that there is a common denominator in that I seem to value sketchiness and suggestion to create a realistic impression with a distinct atmosphere, rather than attempts of mastering skills of photorealism with watercolours. I’m also attracted by interesting colour compositions that can depart from what was actually in the scene. I value this research because it provides some orientation for my own watercolours, and I think it will influence how I approach the second painting in the exercise on subject choices. My first painting for that series was guided by my aim to depict at least moderately realistic the scene with the house, and I feel that I may have overworked the painting a bit so the freshness of the watercolour medium got lost. That said, I still like it for its colourfulness and the motif. It’s rather that I’d like to shift the emphasis towards a lighter approach with details worked out differently – maybe a bit sketchier, maybe with the “few layer” approach instead of the “work until you get it right” approach. This is not a problem of course instructions or tutor advice – I think both support the lighter and bolder approach. It is more a matter of overcoming my own tendency of being to tense with the motif and its details.
With these thoughts about some contemporary American (and international) watercolours I will pause the research for now. I’m glad that I found this resource as a first approach to contemporary American watercolour artists. My Google search brought up many more interesting links and I think I’ll get back to these and explore some more as time permits. Maybe I’ll also research the my five favourites or some of the others in more depth to see how the selected work for the 2013 contest relates to the artists’ other works.
References
The American Watercolour Society: http://www.americanwatercolorsociety.org/
2013 selection online, listing of 32 watercolour artists who have been awarded a price: http://www.americanwatercolorsociety.org/a_awards.php?year=2013