Women and water have always gone hand in hand for me. They are both healing and calming forces of nature. The women portrayed in these paintings are all important women in my life; each has raised me to be who I am today. In the same way, the landscapes portrayed are places where I feel at home. This project is a celebration of the people and places that have shaped me into the person that I have become.

 

I was inspired by Kaye Donachie and her enchanting and mysterious portraits. In her work, she often combines faces and landscapes into one surreal piece. Her portraits are often simplified too, focusing on a limited value range and focusing on defining limited features such as the eyes nose and mouth.

 

I used visible brushstrokes and limited value range to portray stylized faces and water landscapes. They are on tiny masonite boards with no gesso underneath, which leaves the brush with a more clingy surface to move across. The paint doesn’t flow as easy across the board, which allowed for more control and detail. It also allows for there to be only one set of brush strokes, which leaves the painting a little more simplified. Even though the brush strokes seem irregular, each one is thoughtfully applied. Each painting is done in a blue tone, and each tone is repeated in at least one other painting. I wanted to create a unified series but still keep each painting unique, in the same way that lakes, rivers, waterfalls, and ponds are all water, but they all look and behave differently.