Telling Stories with Watercolor

Why do I stay away when it brings me so much joy?

My watercolors call to me from the next room. A few years ago, I turned the room off the living room into an art room. Greg built me a shelf so I could prop up my watercolors while still in process, giving me a continuous view of the row of horses in blue and red and orange and green, all created from photos I’ve taken of my horses over the last 40 years. Each image, cropped into a pleasing or dramatic frame, has a story—well, actually, many stories. They are the stories of my healing, my grief, my joy, and my pain.

All but two of our horses are gone now, buried on this property, seven graves—two in the orchard with my brothers’ and dad‘s ashes, along with a slew of dogs and cats. We were running out of space, so the other five horses were laid to rest between the pasture and the old-growth stand of hickory and shagbark oak.

I long to spend time with our last two horses, rescued ex-racehorses, adopted to keep Charlie company, the last of his entire family who dropped one at a time from illness and old age, but I’m not able to. I’m in a wheelchair now, though maybe not forever. I’ll find out in August at Mayo Clinic what my odds are of walking again. Until I can visit my horses again, I will write about those who have gone before and paint them in watercolor—wild colors like blue and green and purple.

I love blending the bits of dried paint in the pan where I mix colors to create new rich hues and shades from what came before. I use water in varying amounts to create thin layers of paint that, once dry, I can add to for depth and complexity using wet and dry brush techniques. While one painting is drying, I work on another, transferring a drawing to a piece of watercolor paper, or laying in a wash of Paynes Gray to define the darker areas on another.

Right now, I’m working on an image of Sonia jumping into the air with all four feet off the ground. Instead of the typical horizon line with trees and shrubs as background, I’m laying in sketches of lilies I photographed in my garden. Will anyone like it? I can’t say, but the image intrigues me. When I begin a watercolor, I have no idea how it will turn out. I can add more color to heighten the drama, or pull up some of the existing color, with water and paper towels to blot, to soften, and sometimes to see if I can selvage it when I’ve overworked the painting. Most often, that will be enough for me to be satisfied and share it. But if I need to trash it, I can always start anew on a fresh sheet of 140 or 300-pound paper with the same drawing, using different colors or techniques.

Part of the reason I love working in watercolor is that I lose myself in the process of its making. This is true of all my creative efforts, whether writing or sculpting clay or stitching my art quilts, but watercolors are the easiest to pick up whenever I have a few minutes, and to set down when something else requires my attention, or when I’ve grown fatigued.

After I’m finished with my horse series, or at a place where I can pause, I hope to return to my Nature As Symbol series of up-close abstractions that came about from working with a vase of irises (like in the photo above, which was taken yesterday) next to my drafting board. In the summer of 1988, I was in grad school at UCLA. No regular classes but going into our open studio space a few days a week. Creating the watercolors allowed me to stay close at home to help care for my brother Chuck’s partner, Don, who was dying of AIDS a few blocks away.

Creating the drawings, often from dried-up iris flowers, gave me a new language to paint with, and later to sculpt in clay. With my first attempts at these smaller images on Twinrocker handmade paper with deckled edges, I limited my palette, using shades and tints of only two closely related colors on the color wheel, like blue and green, adding an accent like peach. I continue to enjoy many of those paintings because they hang all around my living room, and I will share them in my September 5^th art show because they illustrate chapters in my memoir.

My paintings inspired by the iris flower gave me solace then, as do the horse series I am working on does now while I wait for the leg surgery that will rid me of this power (and when I’m away from home, one without power) wheelchair. Many days now, I don’t even venture outside, mostly because I have so much to do with my writing, publishing, and art, but also because it takes so much effort to get out of my recliner, into the wheelchair, and out the door. I won’t go into all the details, but it is enough to say that my watercolors make my days not only livable but also joyful.

So why do I resist going into the art room to create? Have the paintings become too precious? Is the fear that I might mess them up too great? I push myself every day, saying, “Maybe today, I’ll find the time and the courage,” or whatever it takes to overcome what keeps me away from my meditative joy.

Each day, I am determined to spend at least one hour in my studio, to pick up a brush, dip it in water and drop the liquid onto the sections of dried colors in my palette, some squeezed from tubes 40 years ago, others purchased last month because I had to have a green that separated into blue. I don’t know how the chemistry or maybe its physical properties work to produce the surprising characteristic,but I languish in its beauty. That is, I will if I can get myself into the studio before the day is gone and my energy plummets. And if not today, then tomorrow. I am determined and perpetually optimistic!