This week’s featured artist is Greg Marquez, a watercolor painter from Colorado whose work first impressed me with its calmness and sense of solitude.
Greg explains his artwork further, however, saying: “Having grown up in the West, I have observed many changes in this beautiful place. I do not wish to politicize or editorialize the effect of civilization in the West, only document the hand of Man.”
Utah Highway, above, is one such painting which accepts the highway for what it is—a permanent part of the Utah landscape. I love the way the lines of the road echo the lines in the hills, and the delicate shifts in color all throughout.
And even though Greg’s paintings aren’t always traditional landscapes, they still tend to have that same quiet solitude.
Blue Heron is one of Greg’s few animal paintings on his blog (there’s also a beautiful image of a sea lion) which showcase simple, almost stark compositions.
Even so, the composition works—that horizon line is perfectly placed to visually “support” the heron’s neck and head, keeping it from looking too tall or wobbly as it might have otherwise.
You’ll also find several paintings of alleys, or back streets, on Greg Marquez’s blog—I picked out this next one because of the way it complemented the other two paintings.
You see, despite this particular “landscape” being urbanized with buildings and telephone poles, it still completely embodies the “West” to me. Perhaps it’s the colors—the blue shadows under blue skies—or just the familiarity it represents to me, a life-long Northwesterner, with its mixture of trees and grass and buildings.
To see more of Greg Marquez’s watercolor paintings, I encourage you to check out his blog at artquez.blogspot.com.