From the North Georgia Arts Guild
Penny Bradley’s Watercolors By Susan Brewer
H
appiness seems a part of the watercolors that Penny Bradley paints, whether dogs, cats, children, adults, or aged men. You can see it in their faces: their loving smiles, eyes, and looks. What a gift that is to have, the ability to portray that kind of warmth and goodness in an animal or person.
Penny has worked at it. She has been translating three dimensions into two since she was a child. When she looks at a face, she recasts that visual information into planes of color and shape, and areas of light and dark. Her portraits begin with drawing and end with water and the colored paint. She brings life to “life,” and when I asked her to describe how that happens, she opened with two questions: “What do you see there, and how do you get a three-dimensional thing down on your two-dimensional paper? I have to look at life, whether it’s a house or a person (or a dog), and say, okay, those are just shapes and colors… and some lines. And I’ve got to put them on my two-dimensional piece of art and make them look like I want them to. Seeing is learned, and practiced, though maybe some people are born with it. I practice—I need that.” Penny takes great pleasure in stepping outside the normal way of seeing. She likes investigating the puzzle before her, analyzing it, taking it apart and putting it back together. Next, she went on to describe the process of painting. “The beauty of watercolors is that you put paint on the paper and let it mix itself. You need to have a light touch. The the fewer the layers, the more brilliant the paint is. If I have to throw more paint on there to make the portrait look right, I have to do it. But I don’t like to.”
16 GML - October 2020
