Featured Artist for July 1998

Featured GiveAway by Ann Watson By Lamp Light, 26" x 36" - 1995, Oil On Canvas Valued at $650

David Benton Memphis, TN

By Lamp Light is one of Ann's favorite paintings. At first, she said painting this still-life in normal light was quite enjoyable. But for some reason, she felt it was just missing something. So she lit the lamp that resides in the picture and turned out all the other lights. She then found what she was missing. "Instead of me trying to reach into my painting, the lamp light reached out to me."


MEET THE ARTIST

	Ann Watson was born on August 31, 1947 in a small town called McVeytown in central Pennsylvania. She remembers growing up as a child in a town called, Lewistown, about 12 miles from her birth place. She used to see the Amish ride around in their horse-drawn buggies and saw it so much in her daily life growing up that it never really meant anything to her at the time.
Featured Artist Ann Watson	Her interest in the Amish has spawned the Landcaster paintings which you can see by searching for more of Ann's work at ArtQuest.

Ann always had a great interest in art, even as a child. She was always drawing something and was very shy and quiet as a child. She used to visit special friends during summer vacations who had a farm with about every kind of animal you could name. Her friends, Ruthie and Harry, noticed her interest in drawing and would encourage her to draw pictures of the animals, especially their Prized Chickens. They also recommended she take an oil painting class that was offered at a local paint store. Being she was only about 12 years old at the time and from a family of 13 children (8 boys & 5 girls), there was no way she could afford to take the class. Ruthie and Harry paid for the class and purchased the necessary supplies she needed. This is what truly gave her the first taste for oil painting and she credits her friends for starting her on this path. The class inspired her and the excitement she experienced from oil painting would last her through her whole life.

Ann paints with oils and acrylics and also works with pastels. She would love to paint full time, but she's a full-time professional cake decorator! She works for a grocery chain, Lowe's Foods, in Sanford, North Carolina and has included her art in her job. She is quite skilled at using an air brush on cakes and offers more than the normal decorated birthday cake. She draws pictures on cakes for her customers and it has become so popular that it's difficult for her to get time off since she's the only one with this creative talent. She loves seeing the pleasure on her customers faces when they pick up their cake. Each cake is a "one of a kind" work of art and is exactly what the customer orders no matter what the design.

When not decorating cakes, she mainly paints on canvas and enjoys painting on paper when she's creating small works. She feels she can get more detail on paper and likes to go wild sometimes and make these paintings on paper with acrylics and melted wax. She says, "It's a process of painting and melting wax and layering this over and over and over." Once she's through, she scrapes off the wax and ends up with a design. She never really knows exactly what will appear and says that wax allows you to paint another color on the paper while keeping the previous color under the wax. She does most of her work from pictures that are usually from an inspired moment. She photographs her own moments and paints from certain photographs that appeal to her. So, she's actually painting the scene and experiencing the emotions that she felt at the time she took the picture.

	Simply titled, Reflections, gives us quite a view into how lush the surroundings appear to set off her fine detailed reflections of the bottles in the mirror.
Reflections, 26 x 26" Acrylic on Canvas, 1995

ABOUT THE ARTIST


She wasn't able to take art classes except in high school and was fortunate to have an art teacher who recognized her talent. He allowed her to try all areas of the arts and you'd always find her in the Art Room. She graduated in June of 1965 and moved to Baltimore, Maryland. She lived with her sister, Grace, who was gracious in giving her this opportunity until she found a job. But it was short-lived as she married that same year and in 1966, had a beautiful little boy named, Lee. He was her pride and joy and she wanted to have another child but was simply unable. So, she cared for foster children so that Lee would have other children around. Now that's what we all call commendable inspiration! In about a two year period, they cared for 22 children between the ages of birth and the teenage years. And it broke her heart each time she had to give back a child in her care. Then came a foster baby girl, 4 days old who she nurtured and loved as her own. She was in their care for about a year when they arrived to tell her she was being put up for adoption. Well, this was one child that they decided was simply not leaving the nest as our supervisors would say. They applied for adoption and two days before Christmas of 1976, Tammy was part of the family. She didn't do much drawing through these years except for drawing pictures for her children. She enjoyed making special cakes for her children which spawned her talent and skill for cake decorating. She took cake decoration classes and believes it was her way of creating art. She even went to an intermediate class and then on to the advanced level.

She divorced in 1978 and moved to Boone, North Carolina in 1981. She married a wonderful man, Dale, in 1986, whose family was originally from this area. Dale's Uncle, Doc Watson is a well known Bluegrass singer and is known country wide for his Flat Pickin'. About this time, she noticed an ad in the newspaper for a cake decorator and applied for the job. The rest is history and she's been a professional cake decorator ever since. When she took the cake classes, she really never thought that it would become her career. She really enjoys being creative in her work and loves seeing the same customers year after year on their birthdays. Dale talked her into getting back into her art again and has been so supportive in all that she does. Although she enjoys painting again, she felt there was still much to learn so she started taking classes at Caldwell Community College and attended a Figure Study at Appalachian State University. She truly enjoys still life's and landscapes.

Again, Ann's fascination by light and color distort the reflection in the glass bottle in Jars and Stripes. Light and reflection are what inspire Ann to paint a particular work of art and this work seemed to beckon her to create the image on paper.
	Jars and Stripes, 20 x 16" Acrylic on Paper, 1995

Ann usually paints in the evenings after her family has retired for the evening and the house is quiet. She gets involved in painting and forgets about time and ends up painting quite late. Once she's into her painting, it's really hard for her to leave -- especially when things are going well. Sometimes she'll have a few works going at one time, and when one isn't going smoothly, instead of struggling with it, she'll put it aside and work on something else. In a couple days she'll go back to it with a fresh mind and everything seems to come together again. She has paintings that have never been finished because she just hasn't found the "right" time to complete them yet. But she says, "One day they may get finished when it's their time." She paints in a portion of her living room so it's hard sometimes to find the quiet time to paint. She has loaned her studio to her daughter and grandchild for now. So, she says with a sigh, "My studio is a bedroom for a while." When she worked out of her studio, she would go in after dinner and wouldn't show her face again till the wee hours of the morning. Her husband would come in with a nice cold drink and investigate what she was working on and she credits him as one of her best critics. He visits and says, "Honey, it's time for a break." So, they'd sit and have a drink and talk about her project. Afterward, she's refreshed and is ready to paint again. His attention seems to pull her away just long enough for her to get a new perspective.

	While vacationing in Cleveland, Ohio with her husband, they visited one of his boyhood hangouts. They were reminiscing and enjoying ice-cream when her husband recognized the same owner of the shop when he visited as a child. It was a nice experience for him to find that some childhood memories never change.
Ice Cream Memories Unchanged Oil on Paper, 16 x 20", 1995

She loves family life and it means the world to her and says her family needs have always come first. She wishes she lived closer to all her brothers and sisters and feels she misses out on so much that happens in their lives. She loves working in her flower gardens and enjoys walking her granddaughter, Kelsey, outside to see all the pretty flowers. She loves to plant a garden and eat fresh, home-grown vegetables. She loves nature and strolling around their land taking in the wild flowers and all the different kinds of trees. She loves the pines and the cool, quiet feeling she gets when she walks underneath them. She feels so close to nature and closer to God.

When Ann first moved to Moore County, the beautiful ponds, horses and sunrises caught her eye every morning. This was a scene she experienced every day going to work and she just couldn't rest until she got it down on canvas. Another must see in the art listing area to experience the light and the detail of the horses in the distance.
	White Hill Farms, 12 x 16" Oil on Canvas Paper, 1997

	You'll not only experience Ann's painting strength in still life's, but landscapes take on a life of their own as well. She came upon an old picture of one of the Old Watson Homes where her husband's grandfather lived. The house is long gone now, but the memories live on in Ann's rendering.
The Old Watson Home, 1995 Oil on Canvas Board, 16 x 20"

Contact the Artist

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ARTIST STATEMENT

I like to make people happy and I've found that through my talent, I'm able to please friends and family members, even strangers, by painting portraits of loved ones, their homesteads or pets. Seeing the pleasure in their eyes as they're looking at a painting that I've done is joy beyond measure. Even when it is a painting that I have been commissioned to do, when I can put something into that painting that brings that satisfied look on their faces when they see the finished project, it makes me so happy and gives me the satisfaction that I have created something that will be treasured through the years. I love to see something in nature that inspires me and then render those feelings into a painting. Even if it isn't the 'perfect painting', it's a way of expressing my emotions. It's like a writer sitting down and writing a story and putting all their feelings and emotions down on paper. I do the same, only on canvas. ~ Ann Watson