October 6 ~ November 1, 2005

"The Art of Watercolor"

Still Life to Abstraction

A new season opens with the first El Paseo Artwalk on Thursday, October 6. On display are works by Ed Baynard, Roberto Lauro, Roberto Azank and Siegward Sprotte, all of them longtime gallery artists of international stature. Each communicates a personal vision through distinctive use of brush strokes, composition and subject matter. Watercolor has been called the medium of spontaneity, but it is likewise “unforgiving” in a technical sense because mistakes cannot be covered up or corrected. Knowing this, we can appreciate the meticulous dedication to fine detail and the technical control displayed by these four artists. Yet each has a unique approach to color and light in his artwork.

Watercolors by Ed Baynard

New York artist Ed Baynard possesses an elegant and technically refined touch. The lines are clean without being cold, and the colors create a harmonious balance. The artist uses beautiful pottery images and other vessels in his stylized floral compo-sitions, which create a tranquil and meditative space.

The Swiss artist Roberto Lauro, the only sculptor in this group, explores the structural relationship of metal and glass through his sculpture. The transparency of his watercolors has much in common with glass due to the unpredictability of both mediums. In fact, his watercolors serve as inspiration for his three-dimensional works.

Watercolors by Roberto Lauro

Roberto Azank from Argentina has a similar perspective on watercolors as the most immediate means to capture color relationships. The speed with which he can execute the composition is much faster than an oil painting and therefore much closer to the creative impulse. Later, when doing the oil version of the same composition, he refers to the original watercolor to help re-create the color and vibrancy.

Watercolor by Roberto Azank

The widely admired and praised painter-philosopher Siegward Sprotte, who passed away late last year at the age of 91, created color symphonies to the brilliance of nature, striding the narrow path between naturalism and abstraction. Sprotte’s artistic style was similar to the ink drawings of Asian artists, whose intention was not to depict a likeness of nature, but rather to become “one” with nature. In his floral and landscape watercolors, the artist placed the colors adjacent to each other without touching and succeeded in creating minimalist images that looked like colored calligraphy.

Watercolor by Siegward Sprotte

Previous Exhibitions:

Delos Van Earl: The Phoenix Series

"Flowers & Vessels" Roberto Azank and Brian Russell