Luminous Objects
Watry was the Second Prize winner of International Artist magazine’s Challenge No. 107, Wildlife.
Lorraine Watry has been a watercolorist for the past 25 years, specializing in contemporary realism through keen details, light and color. This focus on technical elements has evolved over the years but has remained a key component to her compositions. She says, “I still paint in a realistic manner as I did in the beginning, but my color sense and values are more refined and stronger. I now have a technical understanding of the medium that allows me to paint images that exploit the beauty of soft watercolor passages with defined realistic subjects.”
Watry often works from photographs and says she does “a lot of the composing in the camera and it is usually the color or light in the scene that will capture my attention.” Sometimes she combines multiple photos to form the scene or does a color study to work out various parts of the painting.
“I believe the representation of light and the use of bold color are two important elements of my artwork,” Watry shares. “They place the subject in a moment of time that will capture the viewer’s attention. I also use the element of repetition to add texture and forms that help draw your eye through the scene. I enjoy playing with the juxtaposition of graphic shapes around natural objects as seen in several of my water lily paintings. This technique gives the viewer a new way to see the subject.”
In Bamboo and Lilies—painted from a scene at the Denver Botanic Gardens—Watry was drawn to an artist’s bamboo sculpture in the water that created an interesting backdrop and graphic reflections. While visiting the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, she was inspired by their lily pond for her piece Lilies and Glass Globes. Watry explains, “I really liked the repetition of colors between the glass and lilies, and the organic, natural lilies with the man-made yet still organic shapes of the glass.”
Wildlife such as birds, including the swan seen in Cygnus Olor, and band instruments are among Watry’s other subjects. “I enjoy exploring different subjects because the variety keeps me challenged. The subjects may be varied, but many of the images I choose to paint have reflections in them,” she shares. “I love the challenge of painting reflections in water, metal and glass.”