Featured Artist: Gary Watson
Our featured artist this week is painter and author Gary Watson. I met Gary about four years ago at an artist meeting for Open Studios in Vancouver, WA. It turned out that Gary and his wife have many things in common with Tim and I. Love of art and travel, living as expats, and sharing our crafts with others. Here is what Gary said about his work.
All art is a gift and one that passes from generation to generation. My earliest memories are of living on a small farm on the outskirts of Bellingham, Washington and of listening to my grandmother tell stories. Six decades later, I wrote three novels between 2005 and 2016: Leaving the Bones Behind, Gabriel's Covenant and Mercy in Masquerade, now available on Amazon. However, in 2015 I set my pen aside, found a group of talented artists and began to paint. To my surprise the art forms melded. And storytelling, the fictional kind, threaded them. With an abundance of curiosity, little fear and a willingness to let intuition guide my strokes and color choices I embarked.
My artwork often presents a simple story using a limited pallet of colors, telling just enough — an entree — that hopefully leads viewers to find their own desserts. Renewal is a fresh from the pallet example: “Somewhere there’s a broken down fence on a cowboy trail near sunset where thistles still bloom and flowers grow and Monarchs pause. I’m sure of it.”
I view each piece of work as an experiment. For example, I used a water based paint combination on synthetic paper to create, Hiding from the Storm. This piece won Best in Show at a San Francisco Wildlife Conservation Spring Expo in 2017.
As a co-founder of Art for the Life of Elephants, an artist group that contributes to the ongoing struggle against the slaughter of elephants in Africa and other wildlife causes, the story told in this piece is simple and universal: “When it’s too hard to look back and you’re too afraid to look ahead — look right beside you and I’ll be there.”
Art meets advocacy. Vancouver novelist and artist Gary Watson at his home studio prepares a 2017 show at the Second Story Gallery, above the Camas Library. Here, in an interview with Post-Record’s Kelly Moyer, he talks about the plight of African elephants and shows her how his wildlife advocacy began with the idea of "Mara," an African elephant featured in his 2016 novel, Mercy in Masquerade. (Feature article by Kelly Moyer/Post-Record)