About Jo

I have loved art all my life. I designed Barbie clothes from found objects as a child and began my love of painting in high school. I had wanted to pursue a career in the arts, but I met the love of my life and focused my creativity on domestic life, raising children, designing costumes for school plays, painting murals for grad nights, and finally pursuing a career in education as a grant writer and administrator.  I focused my creative energy on grant writing, volunteering, and developing marketing materials for the department. I continued to dabble in watercolor painting, but it was a chore to bring out all my materials to the dining room table and put them away just as fast as I put them out.  My wonderful husband saw these challenges and transformed our back porch into an amazing art studio, so I could leave everything out and work on my art in my leisure.

I retired in 2016 and began honing my skills as a watercolorist.  I started with online classes, bought a ton of books, but it wasn’t until I took Linda Lord’s watercolor class at the Santa Cruz Art League that I truly felt like an artist.  With every assignment and every painting, I was amazed at how I was able to transform Arches 140 lb. watercolor paper into an eclectic array of images that brought me joy.  

I rarely paint a series of one subject matter, as I find the world too interesting to limit myself to one category of images. My paintings have included solitary delicate flowers, vibrant and textured still life’s, birds, animals, portraits, landscapes, seascapes, and other objects or images that I find intriguing.  I paint both with and without backgrounds, depending on the ambience I want to convey.  Originals are either matted and framed or adhered and waxed unto cradle boards.

My compositions are transferred to watercolor paper through sketching or graphite transfer from an original photo.  I then use a variety of watercolor techniques to bring vibrancy, depth, and texture to my work.  Depending on the composition and subject matter my techniques typically include one or more of the following:  glazing, washes, wet-in-wet, wet-on-dry, dry brush, salt, sponging, scraping, masking, scumbling, blending, spattering, scrubbing, wax resist or new textures created from various found objects. The whole process brings me joy - from finding an image to paint, transferring it to watercolor paper, selecting the color palette, the first brush stroke to the last brush stroke - I am in artistic heaven.