ArtistsNetwork.com 45“ItraveledaroundChina,and—
althoughI didsomeworkthatwas
slightlysurreal—alotofmywork
camefromdirectobservation:,going
outandpaintinganddrawingfrom
life,climbingmountains,lookingat
theviews,”hesays.“Itgavemethe
licensetochangewhatI wasdoing,to
breakoutandbasicallydoanythingI
wanted.Itdidn’thavetolookodd;it
couldjustbereallystraightforward.”
“Using composition as a device to make the viewers see
what I want them to see is an important aspect of my work.”
LEFT
Chair (Contemplation)
(watercolor on paper,
30x22)
BELOW
Locked and Loaded
(watercolor on paper,
15x22½ )
While in China, McEwan was
introduced to diff erent brushes and
materials, many of which he has used
in subsequent paintings. It gave him
the space to review his technique—the
way he used paint, color and brushes.
His current work is light-years away
from that of his art school days.
“Now a lot of the things that you
see look very realistic, but I can guar-
antee that you won’t see these actual
objects,” the artist says. “Even if I’ve
painted from life, I’ve changed the
obects in some way. I’ve altered the
color, the surface texture, the tone,
the composition—or I might even
have left things out altogether. So it’s
not about pure mimicry to the extent
that someone could say: ‘OK, I can
take a photo of that.’ Th e trickery
involved is that I’ve made you believethat it looks real, whereas often I’ve
actually altered things to make the
painting more interesting.”PURE COLOR
Th e color McEwan achieves is startling
in its intensity. He creates this eff ect
not just by building it up as he goes,
but by working with warm and cool
colors. “When using watercolor, it
looks like many artists have stuck
a child’s palette on their painting
because it’s so bright,” he says.
“Th ese bright colors really need to
be countered.
“Th e way I work is to use clean,
pure washes of color,” he continues.
“I don’t do a lot of mixing on the pal-
ette; instead, I layer one color on top
of the other. If I go too bright or too