Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Kirkland Artist Studio Tour





Mother's Day Weekend was also the Fifth Annual Kirkland Artist Studio Tour and I came with John Cogley, owner of Daniel Smith Artists' Materials, to visit the studios on the tour. We were able to visit the studios of Ann Fiser and Robert Fiser, Elizabeth Kincaid, Chris Sharp and Layla Jacobson before fatigue from the Camano Island Studio Tour the day before set in and cut short our itinerary for the day.

While at the Studio of Ann and Robert Fiser , Ann showed us a unique way she has of keeping her watercolor paint examples. Ann paints the watercolor on watercolor paper she has cut out approximately 1.5 by 6 inches from full color strength to 50% to a wash, labels it, punches a hole at the top and keeps it on a ring in much the same way as an interior designer would with paint samples. The advantage is that when she adds a new color to her collection Ann can easily slip it into place. Really a cool idea!

Elizabeth Kincaid had a very unique way of organizing her workspace and palette, she uses an entire butcher tray for each watercolor and each tray rests on plastic paper organizers, four high, that you buy at office supply stores! This way her colors don't get corrupted as she feels they do on a smaller palette. We also got to take a peek at a work in progress that is a real labor of love for Elizabeth, her extraordinarily complex "Tree of Life" watercolor painting.

Trying to make the rounds to both the Camano Island Studio Tour and the Kirkland Artist Studio Tour in a single weekend began to wear on us, so we decided to shorten the tour that Katherine Taylor (Manager of the Bellevue Daniel Smith Store) had planned for us.

Our last two stops were a group exhibit at Sharp Studio where we chatted a bit with Chris Sharp, and stopped to see Layla Jacobson and Petra Fursman and the paintings on display at the Petranella Fursman Studio.

When visiting each of the studios, John brought some Daniel Smith Art Supply goodies to give to the artists we visited, in the form of a hand full of tubes of Daniel Smith Extra Fine Watercolors!

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