32 Watercolor artist | APRIL 2019
She then took a leftover sheet of the
watercolor paper and began to play
around, painting a few monochromatic
fi gures in three smaller, separate
works. She included the pieces in an
exhibition of her oil paintings, and
they unexpectedly stole the show.
With that, Cavanaugh shifted her
focus to watercolor.
She worked on watercolor paper for
nearly a year when—thanks to
another home improvement project—
she made a creative connection that
would invigorate her career. “As I was
applying fi nishing plaster to a wall
using trowels and water, I started
thinking about frescoes and how
watercolor might work on clay or
plaster,” she says. “In my search for
materials, I discovered Aquabord,
which has a textured clay surface.”
Th e surface off ered a workability that
continues to feed the artist’s expres-
sion and has transformed her career.MODERN FRESCOES
Th e custom-made clay panels that
Cavanaugh uses now are made of tem-
pered hardboard, treated with an
archival coating and fi nished with a
kaolin clay veneer. Her fi nished paint-
ings, which are varnished with a UV
coating, don’t require framing behind
glass. She calls them “modern fres-
coes,” because they’re quite unlike the
traditional image of watercolor paint-
ings as a loosely painted picture on
paper, framed behind glass.
“Paper has more beautiful absor-
bency,” Cavanaugh says. “Th e layeringAfterglow (left) and Erosion
(below) are also part of the
“Chroma” series, but both of these
pieces use acrylic, which
Cavanaugh says she needed for
certain effects. “The fl uorescent
orange in Afterglow [watercolor
and acrylic on clay panel, 8x8] is
Golden high-fl ow acrylic, the closest
thing to ink,” she says. She started
both paintings by just playing
with the acrylic—puddling it,
running water through it slowly.
“The burnt sienna in Erosion
[watercolor and acrylic on clay
panel, 8x8] was so grainy that I just
let it do what it was going to do,
and then began sculpting the face
out of it,” she says.