Featured Artist Elaine Nunnally

Elaine Nunnally’s impressionistic watercolors elevate images of roads and highways into dynamic, colorful scenes. Enjoy more of her paintings by visiting her website.

 

 

Art feeds my soul. I’ve been painting and creating artwork for as long as I can remember.

 

 

Watercolor is now my primary medium, but I used to be an oil painter. Once I took a watercolor workshop, I was hooked and haven’t looked back. That was over thirty years ago and I still find the diversity, spontaneity and luminosity of watercolors to be intoxicating! I had a forty-year career teaching high school art, which I loved. I am now able to devote my time to painting, which is my first love.

 

 

Although I learned traditional methods of transparent watercolor in the beginning, I have been inspired by the many non-traditional methods being used by today’s great watercolorists.

 

 

I paint with heavy applications of pigment on paper and I blend pigments together using a stiff brush. It hearkens back to my acrylic and oil painting days, and I often throw in some gouache and acrylic for texture and opacity. I can change my mind at any time and wipe off an area with a wet sponge.

 

 

I never know exactly what my paintings will look like until I’m done, or actually, until the painting tells me that I’m done! It’s a constant dance between the painting and me. The creative energy I feel when I am painting is almost magic.

 

 

For the past twelve years, I have been working on a series that depicts highways and interstates. Sometimes I refer to these as Odes to Eisenhower, since it was President Eisenhower who established the interstate highway system in the United States.

 

 

I was originally inspired by the long trips I took on Interstate 81 every day to attend a watercolor workshop. It was required of each participant that they develop a theme to use for the week. The views that we see behind the wheel of our cars began to appear to me as great designs for artistic creations.

 

 

All the design elements and principles are there—curving and straight lines, colors, textures, positive and negative shapes, direction and movement, vanishing points, etc.

 

 

“Orange Highway” is representative of the impressionism and abstraction that I’m trying to achieve in my work. I’ve become obsessed with highways and am constantly on the lookout for different landscapes, times of the day, or different weather conditions that impact our view from behind the wheel. We are all familiar with driving along a highway and seeing flashes of colors and shapes whiz by at 65 miles an hour!

 

 

I’ve been fortunate enough to have my paintings juried into many national and international watercolor exhibitions. I am a signature member of several watercolor societies including the American Watercolor Society.

 

Artist Elaine Nunnally invites you to follow her on Instagram and Facebook.

 

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