Exploring With Watercolors

As the colors in my palette combine, their notes and chords inspire my brush to dance across the paper, sometimes like a ballerina and other times like a tango dancer. It is this dance, this play, that compels me to paint. The paint spreads across the page in ever changing and hypnotic ways, in large sheets of color and smaller staccato marks. In one passage it is transparent, revealing its color as it passes over the clean, white paper and then changing to another more complex color as it passes over an under-painted shape. In the next passage, it is opaque, covering and masking out everything beneath. And then there are those transitions that are in-between and deposit sparkling and brilliant sediments.

It is this spontaneous performance of the watercolor medium that I direct while shaping images and spaces on the sheet of paper. The variety of possibilities makes every painting unique. In fact, sometimes I may paint the same motif over and over. I may vary the layers of paint or the color combinations, changing the mood, atmosphere, or time. it is this type of exploration that makes watercolor a unique and rewarding painting experience.

--Ray M. Hershberger