Showing posts with label abstract. Show all posts
Showing posts with label abstract. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Mike Bailey


MOMA's Vertigo, 22" x 30"

Watercolor began as a kitchen table hobby for Mike Bailey in 1988, but soon consumed his every thought. Although he had been attracted to art all his life, his college degree was in engineering and he spent many years in the high-tech world before starting to paint at age 46. Primarily self-taught, he is driven and deeply passionate about painting. As he puts it, "I paint because I have to. I teach because I want to spread the joy I have derived from being a painter."

Always reaching to attain new levels of growth, he is continually experimenting and testing his limits and his visions. In Mike's words, "I think
desire is ninety percent of talent. You are only as good as the amount of painting experience you accumulate. A lot of experience in anything leads to wisdom about that thing." Accordingly, he paints almost daily. Whether it is abstract studio work or casual plein air outings, he finds it difficult to point to a favorite subject or style, but his goal is to make "not seen before" work.

Blowhard II, 22" x 30"

Considered a very gifted teacher in the field of art, he teaches workshops -- intense, hilarious, and full of motivation and support -- throughout the U.S. and Europe. His course "Watercolor Beyond the Obvious" is a rigorous exploration of design and a discovery of personal artistic breakthroughs. Altogether, he spends about 15-20 weeks a year teaching groups ranging from beginners to advanced painters.


Slip Strip Abstract, 15" x 22"


A Cheap Trick, 22" x 30"

Mike has won awards in exhibits around the country and has been featured in Watercolor, The Palette, and Watercolor Artist magazines as well as several books on watercolor. His work is in both corporate and private collections throughout the U.S., Europe, and Australia. He is a Signature Member of the National Watercolor Society and is just beginning a two-year term as President of that organization (2010 and 2011).

White Blankets, 22" x 30"

Please visit
Mike's blog and then hop over to his website for a look at his extensive body of work.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Katharine Cartwright


Nest Eggs on Wall Street, 19" x 28"

"I think in pictures and my paintings are my voice," says Katharine Cartwright. "As with speech, the central concept is the most important aspect of what I paint. Without meaning, my paintings would lack relevance and uniqueness." She paints in series and often has several different series going at the same time; a series may include only a dozen paintings, but frequently more, and may take anywhere from a year to a decade to complete. Starting by formulating a concept, she then selects materials, a color palette, and compositions to support her idea. In the series featured here, she has utilized broken egg shells in a manner that bridges realism and abstraction to express the fragility of life and our investments. Because the work is allegorical rather than representational, she disregards realistic color in favor of color strategies that contribute to an effective composition. Katharine has completed over 50 paintings in this series in the past four years and intends to continue it with the goal of incorporating new and meaningful elements with each new step.

All Cracked Up XXI, 28" x 19"


All Cracked Up XXII, 28" x 19"

Katharine's parents encouraged her to become an artist, providing her with a formal education in fine art at Linden Hall School for Girls, Kutztown University, The Maryland Institute College of Art, and The College of Charleston. Trained in techniques for oils and acrylics, she only began using watermedia ten years ago and fell in love with it. She is an inducted member of the National Association of Women Artists and a signature member of the North East Watercolor Society and the Missouri Watercolor Society. Her watercolors have been accepted into numerous national and international juried exhibitions and have won top awards, and her work is included in over one hundred private and corporate collections. In addition, her work will be featured in two books to be published this year -- Best of America Watermedia Artists Volume II and The Artistic Touch 4. Katharine maintains studios in New York and Maine and teaches painting workshops in all media throughout the U.S., with a special focus on concept development.

All Cracked Up XXIII, 28" x 19"


All Cracked Up XXIV, 28" x 19"

Please link over to Katharine's blog to see more of her work and get further information about her workshops. Be sure to link through to her website as well.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

David Coffin


Spring Rivergold, 2006, 12" x 16"
watercolor and gouache on acrylic-primed paper

David Coffin's art is inspired primarily by his life-long love of pictures, of art history, and of craft and popular-culture traditions and only secondarily by the look of the "World Out There." While he is intoxicated by the beauty of the world, it is the potential of handmade images for giving us unique experiences that keeps him interested in painting. In his words, "I've always been most entranced by paintings built on things that only skilled, imaginative hands can do -- things like invoke non-physical realities, combine ideas and objects that don't meet in Real Life, assemble evocative new patterns, color harmonies and textures, and most of all, generate new feelings in purely visual ways -- that's the enduring mystery of pictures to me. I want to be a part of the exploration of that potential, and if I ever give another person a moment of delight or delicious pause because of something I discovered and brought into existence while painting, it's worth it."

Spring River, 2005, 15" x 22"
watercolor and gouache on acrylic-primed paper

David was a painting major in the late 1960s, but it was only after college that he discovered watercolor to be the perfect medium for his tastes and instincts. He was a transparent watercolor purist for many years and was dedicated to representational imagery in the service of conceptual compositions -- basically a painter with the mind of a collagist, more intrigued with what he might assemble than with what he could find in real life. His work won awards in the Chicago art-fair world in the 1970s and was included in national shows including the National Watercolor Society annual shows; he had a painting published in one of Maxine Masterfield's books and was invited to be artist-in-residence at a community in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

Spring Riverblue, 2006, 30" x 22"
watercolor and gouache on acrylic-primed paper

Eventually, the need to look for another passion for a living led him to spend several decades as a writer and editor of Threads Magazine, a well-known national publication for fiber arts. Then, in 2000, a powerful dream changed everything. He awoke from his dream of touring a painter's studio and, suddenly filled with an exhilirating enthusiasm for painting again, began to plan his escape from the magazine world. He also decided to let go of all the "purist" restrictions he'd accepted in the past, to allow every possible material, inspiration and impulse, and to let preparation and play merge completely, welcoming abstraction, improvisation and expressive gestures into his work.

Mates, c. 1970, 16" x 12"


Iris Time #3 (part of a triptych), c. 1970, 12" x 9"

Please visit
David's blog and be sure to link from there to see his daily paintings on Eyes & Skies.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Amy Arntson


Under Tom's Pier, 46" x 66"

"A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.” — Henry David Thoreau

Growing up in the Great Lakes region, Amy Arntson has always found water to be a powerful symbol, and her paintings are about spirit as much as they are about water. In her words, "Water is intimately connected with the passage of time, with stability and change: both fragile and seemingly eternal. Most of my current paintings do not reference the surrounding land; instead they focus on light, texture, shape and movement of water. There is no place to stand; only a place to be. Without a horizon line, viewers are encouraged to meditate on the water, projecting themselves into the painting. While the artist begins the painting, each viewer completes it with memories and personal associations."


Clouds Reflected, 27" x 27"

As an artist, author, and art professor, her commitment to painting is enriched by a respect for art and design history, and for the region where she lives. Influences on her work range from wash drawings of the 17th century illuminists -- who addressed the relationship between landscape and the expression of feeling -- to an array of 20th century abstract artworks. Visual design elements of color, shape, and texture are an underpinning to all of her realistic paintings, as are a sense of place and time. The paintings are created from sketches and photographs of locations in the Great Lakes and many other areas; she works in watercolor because, having examined a wide variety of media and concepts, she finds line and wash and watercolor to be consistently the most beautiful and appealing to her eye.


Mystic Gemstone, 23" x 28"

Amy Arntson grew up in the lakeshore town of Frankfort, Michigan. After earning a BFA from Michigan State University, she went on to get her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where she taught art and design for 22 years. Her many lectures and presentations have spanned the globe, and she has also authored college art and design textbooks. A full-time artist, she has exhibited paintings in the Florence Bienniale, as well as in China and England, along with presentations in Central and South America and the United Arab Emirates.


Fall Wind, 35" x 30"


Gulf Storm, 30" x 23"

Please visit Amy's website to see more of her work.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Sandy Maudlin


Past Images, 24" x 36"
watercolor with wax batik and sumi ink on rice paper

Like many artists, Sandy Maudlin enjoys the process of painting at least as much as the final result. She loves to explore the varied possibilities of what paint can do and how she can use it to express what she feels. Working in everything from transparent watercolor to oils, she is hard-pressed to identify either a favorite medium or subject, preferring to push forward to discover the next surprise. As a watercolorist, Sandy is equally adept with transparent watercolor and fluid acrylics, applying them to either traditional watercolor paper or Yupo synthetic paper, and presenting her subjects in styles ranging from traditional realism to experimental and abstract. She brings a willingness to experiment and a fondness for novel techniques to her painting, with exciting results. Sandy firmly believes that an artist's style is within and will be expressed no matter what, and her fervent hope is that people will be engaged by her paintings and feel an emotional response to them.

Golden Venice, 19" x 24"
fluid acrylics on Arches watercolor paper

Sandy earned a bachelor's degree in art from Indiana University and has furthered her education with workshops taught by many well-known artists such as John Salminen, Carla O'Conner, Jean Grastorf, and George James, among others. She is a signature member of both the Watercolor Society of Indiana and the Ohio Watercolor Society and has won numerous Best of Show awards in many annual juried shows. Her paintings are included in public and private collections throughout the U.S. and Europe. Finding it very fulfilling to encourage and watch as others grow creatively, she also teaches weekly classes in her home studio near Cincinnati, Ohio and gives workshops both nationally and internationally.


Junior's Advice, 26" x 20"
transparent watercolor on Yupo


Interlude, 26" x 18"
transparent watercolor on Yupo


Party, 40" x 26"
transparent watercolor on Yupo

Go to Sandy's blog to find out more about her work.