Watercolour is a product of the United States of America, the United States of America,
the United States of America, the United States of America.
Watercolour is an evolving medium. Watercolour from the way I work requires a lot of planning.
It's not a terribly correctable medium and it's not a terribly forgiving medium.
One of the reasons that watercolour inherently, that the use of light is so important is watercolour is a transparent medium.
It does not use white paint. It uses the white of the paper.
In order to preserve your whites you need to plan them in advance.
With watercolour paper you have to know where you're going to leave those whites
and by knowing where you're going to leave those whites you also have to know where you're going to put your shadows
and where you're not going to leave whites. You have to plan it all out in advance.
If you don't do your drawing, I don't see how you make your plan.
I may spend three, four, five days, maybe even a week doing drawings and then I may erase three quarters of what I've drawn
but I've kept the thinking process in my brain.
I had been asked numerous times to teach and I could say,
oh no, no, no, I'm a painter. I'm not a teacher. I'm a painter. I'm not a teacher. And I was at a social event
and a woman who'd asked me many times what I teach for. It was for Howard County Parks and Recreation.
I said, oh, I guess so.
I was so nervous. I was looking for any way to get out of teaching
and someone said to me who was a college professor, just remember you know more about it than they do.
And I was like, oh, I guess I do. And I started teaching and at this point if you told me I could either only paint or only teach, I'd only teach. I love it.
I learned from teaching. I'm very passionate about the teaching. I get a lot of students who aren't sure why they're taking painting class
and I've had students who always wanted to be an artist but real life got in the way and now at 50 or 60 or 70
it's like this flower unfolding and they're finding out what they can do that they weren't sure they could do and they were afraid of doing.
I've had students who are fairly accomplished artists who want to take it to the next level and they'll come back and they'll say, oh, I got in such and so a show
and I got this award and I got that and for me that's as much fun as me getting it.
I would like to say there's a drive that pushes me to do it but the reality is the drive that's pushed me has always been paying the mortgage
and not wanting to go back to work in an office.
