Water serves in many ways.  We drink it, bathe with it, bottle it, cook with it, strive to be near it, listen to it, smell it, watch it, travel freely in or on it, appreciate it as a habitat for thousands of species, and, if we're smart, we also fear water.

Some of us paint with it. As a watercolorist, I cannot do without it. Much of what I try to pass on to my students has to do with the behavior of water as it interacts with specific pigments, specific papers and brushes, none of which are created equal. For most watercolor work, I'm partial to animal-hair brushes, which are more absorbent than most synthetic ones.  And if I'm attempting to depict water, I'll usually choose hot-pressed paper, the smoothest available commercially.  

As a painting subject, water can be truly simple, deceptively simple or beyond pesky.  Much depends on light, how much detail one is after, and location relative to the subject. For many years, I have had recurring opportunities to paint the Delaware River in northwestern New Jersey near the Delaware Water Gap. Low and high water are mostly seasonal on the Delaware, still the longest un-dammed river on the eastern seaboard of the US. My long-term vantage point has been a boat-ramp at Poxono Landing, which allows me to get very close to the level of the water at a point near two curves in the riverbed. The hazards there have tended to be mud, insects, snakes, temperatures and the occasional boat-hitch needing access, any of which can disrupt a

plein air session.  Sometimes it's been better to work from photos taken when conditions precluded plein air in real time.   

 

are both views finished in the studio. One is in oil, the other in acrylic, but I have tried to convey the conditions of water, flowing or frozen, as I had seen them. 

The waters of Venice have given me another body of work.  I was last there during a frigid March with beautiful light but temperatures far too cold to manage anything except not dropping a camera from frozen fingers.  So these views are were also executed in the studio, inspired by what I saw of Venetian water and the reflections it makes possible.