Hey friends & fam,
I hope you are doing well!
Summer (even though it's still spring, the energy is ready for summer haha) so far has been a moment to explore new techniques in watercolor and spend time with works in the studio. As a self/ community taught artist prior to graduate school, I came to know watercolor through making flyers for shows I was playing in the Bay Area, gathering inspiration from artists whose work I loved, feeling things out, looking up videos on YouTube, and connecting with friends who were/ are visual artists. All this exploration led to an unconventional approach to watercolors and a way of understanding the medium that was specific to my introduction to visual art. This current moment of growth and looking at past works has prompted me to think about how I first came to know watercolors, and ask the question, what's in the water that does it for me?
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When I received a Visual & Performing Art teaching position back in Fall of 2014 at a middle school in SF, I thought, 'Wow- art and teaching? This is a dream.' I also thought, 'What on earth am I gonna teach to middle school kids?!? I have never studied art!' So I asked myself, what would I have wanted to learn as a middle schooler? After some thought, I landed on: I would have wanted to learn that I could be a visual artist even if I didn't grow up drawing. That I had a voice and vision that was worth sharing and the capability to communicate these ideas through visual language.
So I taught myself how to draw and paint alongside my students on evenings and weekends. I scoured bookstores and YouTube for resources on how to draw and paint, and asked friends who were visual artists what things would be helpful to know. In my research, I came across a book titled “How to Draw the Portrait” at Green Apple Books (a used book shop). There were no people of color represented in this book which claimed to teach you to paint a portrait of humanity. In that moment, I decided I wanted to focus on painting women of color in watercolor because too often the stories of my Mom and the women in my family are missing from the reference texts and resources, and I wanted to see us reflected in our full humanity. My first collection, called Where We At reflected this initial study and purpose in painting with watercolor.
There is actually one original watercolor portrait left in my studio from this very special initial collection. Here she is:
Things that were practical about painting with watercolor for me were: Watercolor dries quickly, does not require ventilation, is more affordable than oils or acrylics, and holds a range of delicate details and rich drips. Emotionally, it was the perfect medium to me for conveying the depth of humanity in each figure. As I continued painting with watercolor, I began to notice overlaps between how people talked about the medium and Black hair/ Black living. Terms such as “difficult," “control," and “sketch/ not fully realized” were used to describe both. In my focus on portraiture, I started to think about watercolors as always expressing their fullest liberation in the same way Black living has fought to express full liberation. It is just the context that makes it seem like it's doing anything but that. A context or society that is resistant to that fully realized liberation will make it seem out of place, and same with the expressive puddles of watercolor on the page. When there's room for it, it all is essential to painting the most beautiful picture of humanity.
In these initial portraits, I leaned into the swell, the pour, and the bloom- techniques often avoided by “masters” of the medium. Instead, I wanted the watercolors to reflect the beautifully crafted movements of liberation I saw in the people I portrayed. As I continued painting portraiture, I sought ways to protect the subjects in my paintings. I am inspired by painting my family and how beautiful we are, while at the same time, painting portraiture, especially Black portraiture is complicated. Representation is powerful and essential, but at the same time, the subject in the portrait is always on display and available for to the viewer. Throughout history, Black portraiture has been reclaimed from an objectifying experience to an empowering one, but still prompts the question, how much visual information do we need to recognize we are in the presence of humanity?
I love how watercolor carries the movement, essence and energy of the figure without needing to need to put a subject on full display or in high detail. I will always paint portraits, but I will also always paint abstracts because both play a role in bringing us closer to each other and closer to our most liberated selves.
To invite you into these works, I've put together a small, incredibly special retrospective collection of available works in the studio that capture my deepening relationship with watercolor – the perfect medium I've found for expressing our fullest liberation.
With love,
Vessna