Featured Artist Dorrie Rifkin

Artist Dorrie Rifkin’s expressive watercolors evoke the sights, sounds, and heartbeat of city life. To see more of her portfolio, visit her website.

 

 

I paint from my passion and intuition. I never learned the formal rules; my need to make a living trumped all thoughts of a fine arts education. A career as an advertising art director—designing logos, print materials and websites—gave me an alternative foundation for watercolor as well as the chops to plan it all out (the concept as well as the execution), strong sketching skills and a knack for lettering and type straight from the old school.

 

 

In fact, I knew some of the real Mad Men. One of my proudest, and most thrilling and unexpected second-career moments came when my fine art was exhibited alongside some of theirs.

 

 

So I do it my way, but only because I got here on a well-built byway.

 

 

I paint what I love; the life of the city, roots music, beer bottles and the people who matter to me. I’ll shoot hundreds of photos to get a take I can work with. Then comes the painstaking work of preliminary sketching and drawing the detailed blueprint.

 

 

Then, and only then, I commence to build the actual structure, the painting itself, upon it.

 

 

I think of my painting more as storytelling than as technique.

 

 

It is craft, yes, and aspects of it matter to me, in particular the surface upon which I paint (I prefer board, it’s better at absorbing the beating I inflict) and getting the pencil sketch right, no matter the agony, so that I’m relaxed and free when I take up the brush.

 

 

In the end, I want you, the viewer, to hear the traffic’s drone, see the pedestrian’s staccato gait, feel the guitar’s laminate, smell the bottle’s pleasantly fungal aroma. This is much more important to me than the technical aspects.

 

 

If my painting makes you feel an emotion, brings back a memory or makes you smile, I’ve done my work.

 

 

I teach as much as I paint. It’s for love and money! There, too, the job is to balance freeing up novice and developing artists’ intuitive talents yet at the same time help them learn the techniques that underlay solid painting. When students tap that synergy, I am proud and uplifted.

 

Artist Dorrie Rifkin invites you to follow her on Instagram and Facebook.

 

Want to stay current on cutting edge business articles from Artsy Shark, plus artist features, and an invitation to the next Call for Artists? Subscribe to our twice-monthly Updates, and get a free e-book on Where to Sell Art Online right now!