60 Artists Magazine May 2020
For a long time, Wright kept her
representational watercolor work and
her abstract acrylic art completely
separate. “I enjoyed both, but I didn’t
see them overlapping,” she says. That
changed about four years ago when
Wright left her corporate career to
pursue art full time. “It was at that
point, when I could work more regu-
larly and from real-life setups rather
than photos and imagination, that
the melding of the two—representa-
tional and abstract—began,” she says.
By July the Pansies Get Leggy (pages
58–59) is an early example of the
genre mash-up. “I was working hard at
creating a pure abstraction and wasn’t
getting anywhere,” Wright says,
“so I added some collage materials,
turned the surface sideways and sud-
denly there were the pots calling out
for the very flowers that were growing
on my front porch.”
Unpredictability is more character-
istic of Wright’s painting method
than planning. She likes having set-
ups of fairly simple shapes, with the
exception of the flowers themselves,
and no expectations. “I don’t actually
know whether a painting will be a still
life, a floral or an abstract,” Wright
says. “I may be thinking I’d like to
work bigger or that I need to incorpo-
rate more blues, but otherwise, with
this style of painting, I begin with an
open mind.”Trust the Process
Wright begins a painting by applying
gesso to the paper, usually Mohawk
Superfine 90-lb. While the gesso dries,
she makes a 3x4-inch value study of
the still life setup. “I look for lights
and darks, repetitive shapes and rela-
tionships between objects,” she says.
“I may or may not refer to the study
again; it’s just a way to begin to focus.”
A gestural type of contour drawing
comes next, followed by color. “I want
to have surprises in my paintings, so
that’s one reason I begin with a lot ofThe Benefits of Switching
Between Media
Wright began her artistic exploration in watercolor and appreciates
how that has informed her acrylics, especially when it pertains
to color. “I had such a deep knowledge of how to mix paint to get
what I wanted and how to limit my palette for a coherent painting,”
she says. “That’s all really helpful when switching to acrylic.”
The artist also learned a lot about paint transparency and how
to build layers in a way that reveals something of what’s underneath.
“Beginning with lighter, brighter colors to form the foundation of
a painting is a watercolor technique that I use when painting in
acrylic,” she says.
The confidence Wright says she has gained while working with
acrylics in a more abstract way has, in turn, improved her
watercolors. “My acrylic brushwork and compositional skills have
proven very helpful when I return to working in watercolor,” she says.
“My authentic voice is much clearer to me, and it shows. I’m more
able to place a brushstroke down in watercolor and leave it alone
to do its own thing than I had been in the past.”Dandelion Wine (acrylic on paper,
26x20) is unusually muted for
Wright, but she was challenging
herself to incorporate white into
the artwork. “Even with the muted
colors, you can still see bits of the
brilliant color of the underpainting
peeping through,” she says. “I used
sap green as my darkest value,
which gives a less harsh contrast
than if I had used black.”