I have always experienced time spent by the sea as very healing. From the moment my feet touch the salt water, I feel my whole being let go. I hear the water tell me I can rest now, and allow the ocean to carry my burdens.  My heart aligns with the rhythms of the waves, and I become one with that flow. I feel safe here. I can allow this healing water to carry my wounds away, and bury them in the watery depths…forever.

One of the deepest mysteries in this life is that the light can only be found in the darkness. I thought about all this beautiful island light I loved, how much lighter I felt while simultaneously scanning the surface of the sea beneath which a whole world of darkness lay. Beside the ocean’s edge, I seemed more aware of this world of darkness within myself, in whom I sought my own light. What few gems of this light I had found here within were strengthened by the vibrancy of island light. I wanted to capture this light in my paintings. So I began a quest for the light. My journey would be a long one, and yes, I would have to journey into the darkness to find it. The gift would be my own inner light discoveries that would grant me new vision of the light all around me.

One late afternoon in Mexico, I was sitting in a sunlit courtyard with my sketch pad. I started to draw the scene before me of the afternoon shadows painting the courtyard walls in deeper hues. The cascading bougainvillea was on fire, and suddenly beneath it stood a sweet, little Mexican boy, his hand in his mouth staring at me. I quickly sketched him into the scene, and just as suddenly, he disappeared.

Late Afternoon in Mexico, 1986

It was rare for me to include people in my paintings. I had done so with my boys on occasion, along with a few portraits. I once had a therapist who wanted to examine my painting portfolio. Her first observation of all my work was how few people I included in my paintings. She asked me why. I replied that I wanted my paintings to be pure and beautiful. I suppose she concluded from my answer that I didn’t consider people pure and beautiful enough to be in my paintings. My paintings revealed a hidden, sensitive belief perhaps. But at this moment in Mexico, I found this dulce Mexican boy to be a most perfect addition to my painting.

I painted with a softer, delicate touch in my efforts to capture the light.

Bermuda Cove, 1985

I wanted to be faithful to my simple, spontaneous style, yet I found myself being pulled into the most intricate details of what I saw. It seemed my paintings were becoming a disciplined exercise in seeing every little thing that was before me. My earlier spontaneous interpretations were giving way to a new depth of seeing that was now loyal to those visions. I could feel it was taking me somewhere, but I didn’t know where. I surrendered and went with the flow.

Last Day At Kanaha, 1994

I would return from my seaside sojourns with new sketches, and dive into the sea of painting. I would keep the energy of island life alive for months as I painted blue rockers on the porch and island hammocks. I would immortalize my island experience in shades of blue and coral. The light was there somewhere in all those shades. I had to capture it fully.

The Blue Rocker, 1994

Island Hammock, 1995

It would take another few years before my fascination with the light would begin to reveal itself in a new way. It happened after a man I had really loved broke my heart. The light found in the darkness once again.

Christmas of 1995 was tough. The man I loved was gone, I lost a good friend in a drowning accident just before Christmas at the same time my sons lost one of their best friends in a plane crash. Then my mother lost her husband, my step-father, the love of her life, on Christmas Eve. I scooped up my boys, and flew to the island of Tobago Christmas day leaving the holidays behind. I lost myself in colorful beach shacks and sun drenched bougainvillea. I gave my sorrows to the sea, and prayed for more light.

Beach Shack, 1996

Blue Horizon Bougainvillea, 1996

A few months later, I journeyed to Venezuela and the island of Margarita. I was a wind surfer, and Margarita Island was famous for its pale turquoise waters and steady winds. When I wasn’t screaming across the surface of those luscious waters, I was soaking up the island, and more island light. The island was full of hidden beaches, brilliant colored villas and unusual, remote stores.

Peaceful Playa, 1996

Blue Villa, 1996

One of those remote stores was quite magical. It was part of a sacred site according to the owner, who filled it with ancient, artistic artifacts honoring the sacred. The walls and rooms overflowed with crosses, painted gourds, old vessels, old paintings, jeweled silver urns and more. He had the most amazing collection of urns I had ever seen. The sunlight dancing all over them in the late afternoon was magnificent.

Urns In The Sun, 1996

I returned frequently to this sacred store with its sun drenched urns and pots to capture the sunlit shadows at different times of the day. Finally, I felt, I was learning to capture the mystery of island light.

Sacred Pots, 1996

Over the course of the next ten years, I continued to paint the beauty that captured me in my immediate environment. I painted flowers in vases, flowers in the garden, setting suns and whimsical beach scenes.

My Zinnias, 1985

Evans Farm Flowers, 1986

Orange Sun Squash, 1983

Sandy Feet And The Passers By, 1985

I stayed with works on paper for the sake of ease, my love for working with the fluidity of water and my lack of time and patience. It was the spontaneity of colorful expression that compelled me. I wanted to capture the moment right then and there, as opposed to a long journey with oil paint. During these years, I made a switch in media from watercolors to acrylics. Acrylics gave me a bolder use of color. I could thin the colors to behave like watercolor washes, or use thicker washes to really pop the color. My technique for using acrylics on paper was uncommon. To this day, the average viewer is surprised that my works on paper are acrylics, not watercolors.

We are taught in art school to develop a unique painting style that will define us as an artist. It was clear to me that I was a colorist, but I was not always clear as to the consistency of my painting style that I wanted my colors to express. I recognized that I could not force my style into existence, and any attempt to birth it with my mind was futile. I often experienced some deep anxiety over not being certain of my style, and what I wanted my brush to say. This anxiety was exacerbated  by gallery owners, who upon viewing my work, always wanted to know which paintings represented my true style. I never really had an answer for them, and not the one they wanted to hear. I was silently holding a twinge of resentment that my painting style should be of such importance. I believed my life as a painter was a journey, and that my work was still evolving…and maybe always would. My artistic expressions were the reflections of my own inner evolution and growth. How was I to put a halt on that? I feared being hemmed in or pressured to define a permanent painting style.

I finally made some peace with my own artist path after reading The Art Spirit by Robert Henri. It was the following passage that grabbed me and never let me go.

“ART is the inevitable consequence of growth and is the manifestation of the principles of its origin. The work of art is a result; is the output of a progress in development, and stands as a record and marks the degree of development. It is not an end in itself, but the work indicates the course taken and the progress made. The work is not a finality. It promises more, and from it projection can be made. It is the impress of those who live in full play of their faculties. The individual passes, living her life, and the things she touches receive her kind of impress, and afterwards bear the trace of her passing. They give evidence of the quality of her growth. The impress is made sometimes in material form, as in sculpture or painting, and sometimes in ways more fluid, dispersed, but nonetheless permanent and nonetheless revealing of the principles of growth.

Art appears in many forms. To some degree every human being is an artist, dependent on the quality of their growth. Art need not be intended. It comes inevitably as the tree from the root, the branch from the trunk, the blossom from the twig. None of these forget the present in looking backward or forward. They are occupied wholly with the fulfillment of their own existence. The branch does not boast of the relation it bears to its great ancestor the trunk, and does not claim attention to itself for this honor, nor does it call your attention to the magnificent red apple it is about to bear. Because it is engaged in the full play of its own existence, because it is full in its own growth, its fruit is inevitable.”

I began to understand more deeply that my paintings were the outer expression of my inner growth. Because growth is not static, but ever changing, it made sense to me that my paintings would constantly evolve as I evolved. This would continue to be a dilemma for me and the galleries who wanted their artists to keep cranking out a style that sells. It is a crossroad every artist must encounter: to be true to one’s self and the evolution of themselves and their work, or to be true to the galleries and their desire for the perfected style. I chose, for the time being, to be true to myself.

Art is all about seeing. This becomes so evident when a group of artists all paint the same exact subject, yet not one painting resembles another. The quality of art we create is inherent in our ability to really “see” what is before us. Robert Henri was noted for saying, “It is harder to see than it is to express.” I set out on a mission to truly see what was in front of me, to see what was ordinary, extraordinary and even beyond the obvious. As the power and quality of my seeing grew and changed, so did my painting.

I especially recall one moment in the summer of 1984. I was coming up the road to my old farmhouse in Virginia, when I saw a scene in the backyard that just stopped me in my tracks. I had bought my boys an old seesaw, and we had painted it a bright red. There was this this brilliant, red seesaw surrounded in a sea of green shades, the summer breeze swaying in the background bushes highlighting accents of blue violet blooms and the late afternoon light casting deep shadows. I had driven up this  old dirt road every day, yet I had never “seen” this before like I was now. It jumped out at me like a big whale out of the water. This ordinary scene suddenly became extraordinary. I could only attribute it to some shift in my “seeing” since this scene had been there all along. Within hours I had captured it on paper in living color.

The Red Seesaw, 1984

I would guess in every artist’s life, there are moments such as these that change everything. I began to see differently and more deeply into everything before me. I abandoned my concern for style. If what I saw before me were big, bold shapes of color, that is what I painted.

Passing Green,1993

If my seeing took me to the play of light and more delicate detail, that is what I painted.

Summer Birthday, 1995

For the most part, my paintings during the 1990′s began to express a finer attention to detail.

Looking To The Mountain,1993

Yet, there was still the occasional painting where big, bold, simple expressions of color ruled.

Purple Shadow, 1994

As I moved deeper into the 1990′s, I would find my paintings becoming more complex and detailed. I have often wondered if this was influenced by life itself becoming more complex, and the ever increasing need to tend to more details in daily life. My husband and I had divorced, though thankfully it was relatively amicable as far as divorces go. But my life as a single mother became more busy and stressful. If it was so that my paintings were the outer expression of my inner growth, then my growth was definitely becoming more deep and complex. I was losing my innocence.

My father encouraged me to pursue a degree in environmental studies. He often stated that the environment would be a big focus of the future. He was right. I set out to get my degree in Environmental Science, but hard as I tried, I could not pass the required Calculus course. After a full surrender in flunking my mid-term Calculus exam, for the third time, I wandered over to the Art department to console with a friend. I sat down next to her in a watercolor class, picked up a brush and mindlessly painted as I talked to my friend about my dilemma of no longer having a major. The art teacher was making his rounds when he stopped next to me, picked up my painting doodle and said to the class, “Now this is what I am looking for.” The funny thing is that what he picked up was a scratch piece I was doodling on while working on the actual piece in front of me. I turned to my friend, delighted that art had found me. I now had a new major. And I have never put that brush down.

Art is a curious thing, and artists are even more curious because we delve into our hidden wild side. We are not the norm, and are often referred to as eccentric, entitled, emotional, free spirits and a bit crazy. I agree. We can be all of these. But we each come in with our own special design. Our job is to understand what that design is, just like an iris knows when it is time to bloom and show all its beauty that is different from the rose. Like the colors and textures of flowers, we humans also have personality designs that come with our appearance. The key is to blend our personality (ego) with our higher human design so that we live a life that works. I have my moments with my artistic fate since an aptitude test showed I would make a great lawyer. I chose to follow my intuition instead, my love for color and beauty.

Little did I know that choosing this path would bring me such challenges. I mean, how hard can color and beauty be? The actual immersion into it is heavenly and almost a necessity. For being an artist is a calling to give life to all that untamed passion we carry inside. It is called a luxury by some who are conditioned to view it as such. But it is a necessity once the call has been made. Artists take the powerful sea of emotions and feelings that we all share, and channel these into creative form. We would like to be more seen and understood, but after time, that falls away to just the purity of expression and the form it takes as being vital. Art is something that calls you, pulls you, grabs you and once it does, there is no going back if the call is true for you.

Mountain View, 1976

The painting doodles, that caught the eye of my future watercolor teacher, became my signature style. I quickly learned how to create depth with washes from light to dark, then enhancing the details with my now infamous doodles. These were nothing more than dabs of color using the same light to dark build. I struggled with oil painting , and tolerated drawing class. I couldn’t quite figure out exactly what oil paint wanted to do, plus it smelled, took forever to dry and required building a big stretcher with all kinds of prep work to the raw canvas. I was already in love with the way color and water mixed and flowed. I found drawing to be bland and boring. My drawing teacher once commented on an assignment I did saying,” It feels from your drawings that you hated doing this.” I did. I pushed hard with my adviser to replace a Realism painting class requirement for a different painting class. I just wanted to cut loose with color, no boundaries.

I was married young while in college, and became pregnant with my first child my senior year. It seemed I was the only pregnant woman on campus. I accumulated many curious stares as I waddled across campus with my ever growing belly while loaded down with big stretcher frames, or big sheets of beautiful glass as Stained Glass was my minor. After my son was born, my husband took a job as a photographer teacher at the Banff Fine Arts Institute in Alberta, Canada. During our time there, I completed my Fine Arts degree with an independent study in painting with a Canadian painter.

My Canadian Art teacher disliked the watercolor doodle technique that had changed my life. He was all about simplicity of style, minimalism and pure shape and form with color. The next thing I knew, I was painting this.

Cow Field, 1977

Now this was different. I kind of had to open to the idea since he was my teacher. I had just taken to him the best portrait I felt I had ever done, and he demolished my painting technique, pushing me to a bigger, bolder expression. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. It was early. I was still trying to find my style. He seemed to have an issue with the fact that I often showed up to class with this baby wrapped around my chest. The first time I walked into class, he looked at my chest and asked, “What’s that?” I smiled, and casually responded, “This is my son.” He just shook his head. Contrary to his reaction, at the end of the summer artist exhibition, a woman walked up to me and pointing to my baby sleeping on my chest said, “Now that is truly a work of art.”

After getting my degree, and settling in back home, I began to paint every day with works on paper. My husband and I had returned to Virginia, and were scheduled to return to Banff for the winter, but the photography department had caught on fire and burned to the ground, leaving my husband without a job. So we stayed in Virginia near my family’s farm. I was exceedingly blessed to have a peaceful, happy baby who liked to eat and sleep. As a result, I was able to produce 70 works on paper during his first year. I focused on the landscape around me, and cows were a frequent subject since most of the fields were full of them. I continued at this time to be influenced by my Canadian teacher’s eye for the simple, bold use of color while at times combining my doodles of color.

Cows, Winter and Sunset, 1978

Pink Cloud And Black Cows, 1978

Bowl Of Trix, 1978

Early Morning Swim, 1977

Wild Horse Stare, 24″x 30″, acrylic on canvas, unframed.

Original Painting

Wild Horse Stare $1,260.00

Giclee Prints

8"x 10" $80.00 12"x 15" $180.00 16"x 20′ $320.00 24"x 30" $720.00

Sunset Run, 18″x 36″, aqua oil on canvas, unframed.

Ten percent of my sales from any wild horse painting or print will go to The Spirit Riders Foundation in an effort to protect and save the wild horses from extinction.

Original Painting

Sunset Run $1,134.00

Giclee Prints

10"x 20" $200.00 12"x 24" $288.00 18"x 36" $648.00

Prayer For The Lost Ruins, 24″x 36″, aqua oil on canvas, unframed.

Original Painting

Prayer For The Lost Ruins $1,512.00

Giclee Prints

12"x 16" $192.00 15"x 24" $360.00 20"x 30" $600.00 24"x 36" $864.00

Desert Water Bearer, 30″x 40″, aqua oil on canvas, unframed.

Original Painting

Desert Water Bearer $2,100.00

Giclee Prints

12"x 16" $192.00 15"x 20" $300.00 20"x 30" $600.00 30"x 40" $1,200.00

Ghost Dancers Dream, 36″x 48″, aqua oil on canvas,unframed.

Original Painting

Ghost Dancers Dream $3,024.00

Giclee Prints

12"x 16" $192.00 18"x 24" $432.00 24"x 36" $864.00 36"x 48" $1,728.00

So you want to paint? It doesn’t matter how much experience you have. If you want to paint, go with the feeling of that desire. Do not let your mind convince you of all the reasons why you shouldn’t or can’t paint so that you never even pick up that brush. It is easier to paint a good picture than a bad one. The challenge is in having the will to go for it.

Start with a work on paper, not canvas. Work your way up to canvas as it’s a whole different animal and experience. It’s less traumatic to botch a work on paper than canvas, and the creative process does include botching now and then. Paper makes for an easier testing ground, and is less expensive. The use of the brush is also very different on paper than on canvas. Working with a brush and the fluidity of water is a nice gentle approach to painting. It will teach you a great deal before you move on to the thicker, denser paints. I worked in both watercolor and oil in art school, but chose to work in acrylics on paper for many years afterwards. I love the fluidity and flow of water in painting. I chose acrylics over watercolor because I liked the density of acrylics when mixed with water compared to the thinner watercolors. They make now, however, some really electric colors in watercolor that I just can’t match in acrylic; so sometimes I use those to really pop color. I especially love the spontaneity and ability to complete a painting in one sitting as opposed to weeks completing an oil painting. I never returned to oil until I discovered aqua oils eight years ago. I couldn’t resist using them knowing I could avoid the offensive smell of oil and turpentine, and simply mix them with water and a water based linseed oil. Finally, after more than twenty years out of art school, I could return to oil combined with my love of water.

Landscapes are wonderful to paint for many reasons. They connect us to nature in a deeper way through our visual studies, and they bring the beauty of nature indoors. When you really start to “see” nature, it will have many gifts for you. The trick is in actually seeing what you want to create because it is harder to see than it is to creatively express what you see. Your job, before you even pick up the brush, is to really “see” what is in front of you. You want to see the colors, the flow of shapes, the perspective, the lines, the composition and allow this visual to translate into a feeling for what you see. This is how you will infuse your painting with your own energy and interpretation that is unique to who you are and how you live. When I am really seeing what is laid out before me in nature, it often locks into my visual brain where it is vividly stored until I am ready to recall it. Sometimes I have to sketch it for fear of losing or forgetting what I am seeing. I have found that my best paintings result from those times I am able to effortlessly lock in a powerful vision of what I am seeing, and often have no sketches. And I have carried stored visions for years before they have manifested as paintings. The art of seeing comes with time and practice, and is a necessary prerequisite to the eventual art of expression.

Nature is constantly changing with a dynamic energy. The sky that is bright and cloud free suddenly becomes dark and foreboding; the leaves and grasses that were peacefully glowing in the evening light start dancing wildly in the wind; or the soft, muted colors of the fields quickly become bold and daring. Look for the shapes and the energy in the landscape that appeal to your eye and senses. A pleasing sensation is a sign guiding you to expression. A dynamic expression has complexity and depth; it is not flat and boring. You are looking for a composition that has movement even though it may be still, perspective that invites you into the landscape, intrigue of subject matter that reflects your unique vision and color that speaks to all the senses. Less is more, keep it simple. It can be complex yet still simple. Do not make it complicated and busy. Train your eye to see everything that is before you; scan the horizon and take in the colors, the shapes, the movement and the mood. Painting results from both seeing and feeling. This is the foundational work to beautiful landscape acrylic paintings.

Sketch loosely what you have seen on a nice piece of Arches watercolor paper, smooth or rough. Use a light drawing pencil, such as a #2 Hard. Do your sketch quickly, but obtain the flow of your desired composition.You are going to create a painting, not a drawing, so detail is not important. Get the basic shapes along with the positioning of everything in relation to one another. Now put your acrylic paints on a plate, mix colors you have seen and leave some of those pure and straight from the tube. Use a fair amount of water to get the first layers on, and cover the whole paper. Then you will go back in, and start to build the image with layers of more colors. When using acrylics on paper like watercolor, you want to work from light to dark. It is easy to keep darkening colors, and harder to lighten colors that have gotten too dark. This is when colors get muddy, and you want your colors to stay pure and bold when going darker. You are wanting to create depth with purity of color. Mix white, brown or black into your colors sparingly, and only when needed for a desired effect. Listen to the colors, and let them do the talking.

Color is full of the most possibilities in its spectrum that is made infinite by the mixing of colors. Buy yourself a color wheel if you are new to mixing colors as you want to learn, and master, the art of color. It will call you to develop a  sense and sensitivity to mixing the perfect shades. When it comes to creating the brilliancy of your painting, it is in the opposition of cool colors with warm colors, and the subdued colors with bright colors. There is nothing like a pale, soft gray opposing a lemon yellow and a beautiful, rich violet. The secret to capturing the sensation of light is in the use of color. Painters who are masters of light are also masters of color.

See the landscape before you, see the colors that speak to you and let them express your vision. Your beautiful landscape acrylic paintings will reflect all the beauty you have inside that can see and appreciate all the beauty outside and around you.