©Cynthia K. Reid, Bushy Bluestem, Watercolor, 18 x 24 inches

Artist Statement - Watercolor

Watercolor has been my medium of choice for about forty years.  Early works ranged from still lifes to figures to landscape, but soon I found my niche in painting architecture.  I traveled around taking pictures of beautiful older structures, as well as the grittiest of dilapidated high rise apartment buildings with rusty fire escapes and broken windows, or rundown structures in industrial areas with crude signage and electrical poles. 

Eventually holding a brush in my right hand and a photograph in my left, trying to stay faithful to the appearance of the actual building, grew tiresome.  I longed for freedom from the photograph, and the chance to explore organic subject matter. 

Since then I have pursued various subjects of the natural world, mostly landscape. I have a special fondness for scenes involving water, be it ocean, river, stream, or lake. Water is a complex subject to depict; colorless, it borrows its hues from the surroundings, such as sky and sand. The unrelenting ocean waves arriving on shore, and then receding back into the sea is a mesmerizing phenomenon to observe, and for me, relaxing and meditative.

Another favorite is woodsy scenes, or individual trees. Instead of yearning for dramatic panoramas, I focus on the frequently overlooked details around me.  An appreciation of organic shapes and patterns in nature led to study of layers of intersecting branches in a seemingly impenetrable screen of trees, or the effect of the late afternoon sun breaking through a landscape of native plants. 

As a child I ran and played outside, building forts, spying on neighbors from the branches of a maple tree, and guiding my leaf boats down a tiny river in a roadside ditch.  Returning to the woods and fields for inspiration feels like home.