Watercolor Society Highlights National Artists - Inside Art with Michael Rose

Watercolor Society Highlights National Artists - Inside Art with Michael Rose

It is easy to misunderstand or underestimate watercolor. Although it is difficult to gain a technical mastery of this often temperamental medium, it is sometimes perceived as pedestrian. The reality is that watercolor, and associated media, have many of the same pitfalls as oil or sculpture or printmaking, and even the faintest slip with a wet brush can destroy a perfectly good painting. One has only to look at the sensuous watercolors executed by John Singer Sargent on his European excursions, or to examine the romantically diaphanous pictures of JMW Turner to know just how potent water media can be. The nineteenth-century does not have a monopoly on great watercolors though. On view at the Rhode Island Watercolor Society through September 17, 2021, the organization’s National Show highlights some of the best of contemporary watercolors by artists from across the United States.

Housed in the historic Potter Casino within Pawtucket’s Slater Park, the Rhode Island Watercolor Society (RIWS) has been showing watercolors and other water-based media in the space since the mid 1980’s. Their current exhibition draws from artists based around the country and was a competitive affair with well over 200 applicants. From this pool, less than half were chosen to be featured in an exhibition that tracks how artists are utilizing watercolor today.

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The exhibition was juried by Tom Lynch, a prolific watercolorist and art instructor who has written seven books about the medium. He has also presented several award-winning PBS series and shows his own work in a plethora of venues. RIWS refers to Lynch as one of the nation’s premier watercolorists. With the difficult job of selecting works for exhibition, Lynch assembled a collection diverse in technique, style, and even scale. Together, though, the items on view trace the possibilities that come with fluid and ever-changing water media.

The exhibition, which includes 65 pieces, is installed throughout two levels of gallery space in the heart of Slater Park at the curve of the gently winding Armistice Boulevard. Just across from the gallery, the park’s historic Looff Carousel is a popular amusement, making the Watercolor Society a convenient (and free) stop during late summer family excursions.

Like any juried exhibition of its kind, the RIWS National Show includes ten award-winning pieces, which are all quite lovely. Beyond the award winners, there are many other pieces that merit celebration, too.

In the main gallery, Georgia artist Jacqueline Dorsey’s Apathy and Good Books is a large and exquisitely executed portrait that readily engages with viewers. The blonde sitter wears a dramatic collar, reminiscent of Dutch portraiture. Nearby, Becky Haletky’s Boone & Wright Mercantile depicts the interior of a general store in vivid and illustrative detail. The store, located in the abandoned Gold Rush town of Bodie, California, is full of artifacts that elicit the careful attention of Haletky, who resides in Pembroke, Massachusetts.

In another space, fellow Pembroke artist Janice Gallinger shares a gouache nocturne that is both mysterious and charming. Gallinger’s In the Shadow of the Moon puts viewers in the yard of a house illuminated from within on a blue winter dusk.

Near Gallinger’s architectural image, Kentucky artist George Gow exhibits a watercolor collage that combines portrait and landscape. Titled Contemporary Landscape Artist, the multi-faceted piece invites viewers to look closely in an attempt to disentangle the composite elements. Gow’s work departs delightfully from traditional expectations of its medium.

Down a flight of stairs, the RIWS studio doubles as gallery space and features still more works. Carolyn Latanision’s Bound for Shore puts viewers in the front seat of the sailboat heading towards a rocky coast. The bright palette of Latansion’s image is fresh and immersive. Across the room, Jane E. Stoddard, a painter from East Amherst, New York, offers an evocative and highly textured architectural composition. Appropriately titled Waiting in the Shadows, Stoddard’s painting features silhouetted birds about to take flight in the gothic arcades of an anonymous edifice.

There are plenty of other highlights, including Connecticut resident Robert Perkowski’s Y Knot - Old Lyme Tree, which has the understated flavor of an Andrew Wyeth. Another stunner is fellow Connecticut artist Lisa Kassow’s Morning Light, a poetic and subdued image charting the disheveled surface of an unmade bed.

In this exhibition, RIWS offers viewers a rich survey of contemporary American watercolor. After looking at the pieces on view, it is tempting to try one’s hand at it, if only to find that painting with water and pigment is much more complicated than it looks.

The Rhode Island Watercolor Society’s National Show is on view through September 17. RIWS is located at 831 Armistice Boulevard in Pawtucket. The gallery’s hours are Thursdays and Fridays from 10am - 4pm, and Saturdays from 10am - 3pm. To learn more about RIWS, visit their website at rhodeislandwatercolorsociety.wildapricot.org.