UWS June 2020 Virtual Member Meeting Demo: Live Stream with Michelle Nixon

We’ve all seen something beautiful, like a sunset or the view from a mountaintop, and wanted to share our experience.  So many times a photograph falls short of the experience that we had.  Watercolor lends itself well, not to expressing realistic detail, but to capturing the feeling—the impression—of the experience.  In some ways it becomes an even more realistic representation, because it hits closer to the impression that we felt.

The nature of watercolor is to be free; it dries fast.  Once you put down a mark you cannot paint over it like you can with acrylic or oil.  Each touch of the brush is a deliberate mark colored by the artist’s perception and attitude of the subject. Watercolor requires you to be confident with yourself and correspondingly with your strokes. You have to enjoy the way the pigment settles; if you do try to rework anything, it only looks encumbered.  Watercolor is honest.

I feel like my lifestyle enhances the way I paint.  Art is more than just paint on paper; it is what comes as a result of living.  Everyone has their own art. Loving my children, accidentally burning the chicken, taking out the trash, smelling the air—all of the separate parts work together and become what I or anyone else creates.  The fact that we are all living our lives and creating, in any small way we can, connects us to humanity.  I would rather be connected than disconnected.

I’ve noticed my work takes the direction of E. E. Cummings concept of “Enormous Smallness”…tending towards the humble rather than grandeur, subtle rather than the obvious, gentle rather than dramatic.  I like exploring light and mankind’s relationship and interaction with itself and to nature.