I’ve taken Joyce’s fantastic watercolor classes over the years here in Boise, Idaho, and I’ve grown to admire her rich, insightful, and humorous skills as a teacher and her honest brilliance as an artist.
Originally from Minnesota, Joyce Green has been a professional artist for over thirty years. She is a signature member of The National Watercolor Society, The Transparent Watercolor Society of America, The San Diego Watercolor Society, and Watercolor West. She has had works selected for exhibition in the American Watercolor Society (New York), the Northwest Watercolor Society, and many regional venues. Her work has won numerous awards, including four “Best of Show” honors. She is a merit member and past president of the Idaho Watercolor Society. She holds degrees in fine arts from the University of Minnesota, Duluth, and the University of Arizona, and has held professional positions in art education and in art museums in Ohio and Arizona prior to moving to Idaho, where she has resided for over 25 years. Joyce has traveled extensively, and from over 6 continents and 50 years she has documented her artistic inspiration. She’s known for her lively paintings of local dancers in Boise’s thriving Basque culture. She depicts agricultural scenes in her repertoire, including her well-loved sheep. Joyce is often inspired by water scenes in nature and has much love for beautiful complexity, layers, and nuance. Her “Water Music” series is nationally known.
I don’t especially consider myself a watercolor artist primarily, although there is overlap with my work, but I find Joyce’s artistic and personal influence, teachings, and lived experience to be powerfully inspiring. Throughout this blog entry, Joyce has given me permission to share some examples of her masterful works of luminosity, fluidity, and depth of color.
Teaching
When I asked Joyce about teaching, she replied,
Teaching happened because I could. A way to earn a little money (do a little teaching on the side…) and pass along what I know. I had a good education and teaching experience and people would not buy my work, but would ask if I would teach them how I did it, so…[you] do what you must. But I think the statement that teaching clarifies your thinking is so true, and seeing people grow in art has been gratifying.
She continues, “The thing about teaching is you get more than you give, and the more you give, the more you get.” I’m finding this to be true myself, as I teach in a capacity that the current coronavirus pandemic allows. Within my teaching, I am challenged with imparting the importance of discipline for artistic progress.
Discipline and Focus
I asked Joyce, “How do you stay disciplined in your art career?” She replied,
I do not. But I do stay determined. And that was a conscious decision I made one day near the end of my public school teaching stint. Many successful artists stress the importance of treating their art career as a job, planning out time usage, etc., etc. Instead, I have charged ahead and done what I could, when I could, and as much as I could. Be disciplined if you can. But do what you must. I am a “binge” artist. I do things in spurts, obsessively, when I can, stop when I must, and begin the cycle again on the next binge.
Joyce commented that she could have used help from a mentor in her career. I am so fortunate that this is a gift she is so generously giving me. I’m learning from Joyce’s dedicated and sometimes obsessive focus, which is inspiring to me because she allows herself to go so deep.
Curiosity
Joyce is remarkably curious! She has never had a moment of not knowing what to create! She explains,
Picking a subject is easy. Something grabs me and I try to run with it. I have enough ideas for three lifetimes, and not enough time to do them all. Usually there is a quality of light or idea I find amusing, or and unidentifiable emotion or an obvious emotion or a motion or a puzzle or a challenge or something that is remarkable…or or or I want to paint THAT! I have two approaches: control to chaos, and chaos to control. Composition, color, negative space. See in depth, feel in depth, do it well.
Control-to-Chaos Scale
In talking about her process, Joyce said that she usually starts on the controlled side of a control-to-chaos scale by doing six or seven drawings on newsprint to work out composition and negative space. She plans extensively to structure her painting, and then chaos: whimsy and serendipity of the paint occur in the execution that make her paintings sing. Using Joyce’s scale is improving my intentional control, because I believe that my own starting constitution is somewhat more chaotic, and Joyce’s influence is marching me into much needed unity! What a revelation!
A Current Trend
About inspiration, Joyce emphasized, “Most people paint what they see, but you also should include what you feel.” Being thoughtful about people’s responses to art nowadays, Joyce wondered aloud if the choice of somewhat recognizable subject matter with skillful artistic expression is a growing cultural direction in art. I know I usually make choices about art in this somewhat obvious vein, but I wasn’t fully aware of it until Joyce deftly helped me crystallize this thinking.
Conclusion
My spirit meets Joyce and her life and work.
Among the ways we meet are insights into the gifts of teaching, examples of fearlessly plumbing the depths of artistic focus, the wide-eyed curiosity that inexhaustibly fuels inspiration, the teachings of the control-to-chaos scale that strengthens art, and knowing that one’s own personal insight matters in the current art world.
I’m honored Joyce agreed to be my mentor and I’m thrilled to learn from such a genuine and talented teacher and artist.
Here are some of my Nature paintings that use the notion to “paint what you see, but include what you feel.”
Please visit Joyce’s professional website at
http://joycegreenwatercolors.com/
And find her on Facebook at: