Artist Statement

The basis of most of my painting, drawing, and printmaking is gestural washes followed by defining lines. The "washes" might be watercolor or black ink washes and etching inks. I learned from my mentor, English etcher and watercolorist Anthony Gross, that whether one is drawing an animal, a person, or a  tree, it works best to feel the shape and movement of the subject before you even begin. I taught my Art League classes how to use this approach with National Zoo animals, nude figures, and city and country landscapes. The lines that played against the washes were either contour for description or gesture for both action and shape, This approach was particularly helpful in the "Near West" classes at our Loudoun County farm, with wandering horses and cattle, where the inquisitive Connemara ponies and black Angus steers enjoyed nuzzling the artists and nibbling on their paintings and drawings, even rolling in their pallets. I use the wash and line technique in the many kinds of prints that I make: watercolor monotypes, monotypes and chine collé​, lithographs, black and white and four-color etchings and dry points.

Artist CV 

Selected Shows

• I exhibited my Color School paintings at "Banned in D.C.," in Brooklyn in 2013, paintings and prints at the "Three Fleming Sisters of Lafitte" at the Reynolds Ryan Art Gallery in New Orleans in 2013, "The Sunday Series" at Alexandria's Black History Museum in 2003.
• Solo and group shows at Printmakers Inc., including: 
  • Printed! Painted! Potted! (2014)
    
  • Notes from the Animal Kingdom (2019)
    

Awards

• Best in Show at the Art League's "La Femme" for "Mother and Daughter,"  2008
• Award for "Sunday Silence" at Ellipse Mid-Atlantic show of Prints! Prints! Prints! in 2004
• Van Landingham award for four-color lithograph "Wheatfield" in 2018, juried by curator of prints at Smithsonian American Art Museum
• 2018 faculty award for the watercolor figure  "Early Morning," juried by the curator of the National Portrait Gallery.
• The marbleized etching, "Safe Harbor", won an honorable mention in the Art League's small works show, and the Van Landingham 2008 award for the etching "Dreaming".

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Meet the Printmakers Inc. Artists