Written By Evan Balkan
Glamor is not the point. Beauty is. To Eldersburg artist Paula Waterman, a heifer grazing in Carroll County is as majestic a sight as a sunbathing cheetah in the Kenyan savannah.
Paula makes her living as a landscape and animal artist. And although three trips to East Africa have inspired her paintings of cheetahs, zebras, and lions, the fauna right here in Maryland inspires in her the same sort of reverence as those exotic cousins. She hasn’t made her way back to Africa in several years, which means that local wildlife has become the focus of her work. Mid-Atlantic birds – snow geese, egrets, heron – are the most likely subjects of her animal portraits nowadays.
Although she feels that there is no substitute for the awe inspired by seeing African wildlife up close – “You just can’t believe you’re sitting next to a pride of lions or a group of zebras or cheetahs – Nevertheless, “A cow is a beautiful
animal, too.”
In fact, Paula’s love of domestic farm creatures is partly what drew her to Carroll County five years ago. Originally from Arlington, Virginia, she has been a Marylander longer and prefers “this side of the river.” She lived in Annapolis for 15 years, but the rolling hillside and rural character of Carroll County appealed to her immensely.
Now, a farm just two miles from her home offers a wealth of subjects, and it is not at all unusual for Paula to stop her car on the way to the store and snap a picture of a group of heifers lolling in a pond. The image will eventually make its way into her art.
The 50-year-old artist has been creating since she was very young, but reckons that it was around 1980 that she “started getting serious.” Her parents were pragmatists; they warned her of the difficulties of making it as an artist, but they were happy to pay for an arts education at American University in Washington, D.C.
The trouble was, as Paula soon found out, an arts education can be very inhibiting. In today’s world, artists who tend toward the traditional (e.g., realism) are often looked down upon. Many U.S. schools are geared toward the experimental, operating on the belief that unless an artist goes beyond realism, he or she is not delving deeply enough.
But Paula liked realism. She enjoyed the idea of reproducing what she could see, and what she had strong feelings for. So she began to train herself, seeking instruction in books, as well as through trial and error. Meanwhile, for some 20 years, she supported herself and her art by working as a veterinary technician and as a nurse in critical coronary care at Washington Hospital Center. Eventually, like Marcel Proust’s petite madeleine, a remembrance of an eighth-grade art class returned her to scratchboard, a technique she is best known for today.
A relatively obscure medium, scratchboard is a method of rendering an image in black and white. Scratching or etching white lines from the black surface of a clay board produces the likeness. Paula says that scratchboard’s sharp contrast between the clear white of the clay base and the pitch black of the India ink appeals to her.
Sometimes the technique can generate extremes, so she often “smooths” the contrast by keeping her lines as fine and closely-spaced as possible, and by stippling, which she defines as “a dotting technique with the tip of a [knife] point.” The result is a remarkable spectrum, which gives the impression of 1,000 shades of gray between black and white. For example, under Paula’s hand, a scratchboard rendering manages to convey the striking, tawny coat of a cheetah in black and white.
In addition to scratchboard, Paula also works in oil. As a general rule, the subject and light she intends to capture determine the medium she chooses. Landscapes, as well as animals in them, inevitably become oil paintings. She usually reserves scratchboard for animals alone.
In both cases, the process begins with a photograph. An avid photographer, Paula freezes the subject to draw or paint later in her studio. The photographs serve merely as reference. She doesn’t trace, but draws. Nevertheless, she said, “If you’re going to draw an open heron wing, you’d do best to actually get the number of feathers correct.” She insists on taking her own photographs so that she can be the creator from beginning to end. She won’t use magazine photographs, but a trip to the zoo to fill in a detail or two is not out of the question. Still, she feels it is essential to see the animals in their natural habitat and surroundings.
In the spirit of being involved with every aspect of her work, Paula operates something of a “one-person factory.” In the space she describes as “pre-renovated,” and “filled (to overflowing) with promise,” she dodges dogs (she has three Australian Shepherds) to sit at either her easel or drawing table. Dozens of multicolored paintbrushes abound. A slide projector sits nearby so that she can project an image for reference.
Typically, she is in her in her brimming home studio by 9 a.m. She spends the next two or three hours answering correspondence, wrapping, and shipping finished works. By 11 or 12, she is painting and drawing. Generally speaking, she limits work on any one piece to a maximum of five or six hours a day.
From the painstaking process and superb result, it is clear that Paula takes her work very seriously. Along with a small fraternity of realist painters that she counts as friends, she bristles at the suggestion that accurate reproduction isn’t “true art.” Artists like her, she said, “are doing what is the historical purpose of art. We show what we see and what we care about. Fortunately for me, there happens to be a market for what I love to do.”
This love extends to the insular and sometimes curious world of dog shows. A close association with dogs (Paula shows her shepherds) means that canines of many breeds grace her canvases. Although Paula allows an easy chuckle over the notion that poodle pompoms are high art, she insists that poodle cuts (and by extension, poodle owners) are very visually oriented.
In any case, she values the interactions that she has with “dog people.” By and large, those who frequent dog shows aren’t art collectors, but they have difficulty resisting Paula’s perfect renderings of their pooches. Her love of the animals, especially the way they move across the showroom floor, is exquisitely and lovingly captured in each portrait: a trio of shepherds in silent anticipation or gliding over a jump bar, borzois and border collies with jaws open to reveal “smiles,” greyhounds endowed with shimmering sleekness and
taut curves.
Transactions from the dog shows helped to ease what Paula refers to as the “leap into the void,” a career move in which income is variable and entirely dependent upon sales. Finally, she felt it was time to take the leap.
Although her plunge into the art world may have been daunting, the future looks secure. Paula continues to rack up awards and accolades. She has won two Awards of Excellence from the Society of Animal Artists, as well as a Wildlife and Environmental Award from the Mystic International Juried Exhibition. She also has collections housed at the Inland Contract Carriers in West Bend, Wisconsin; MBNA America in Camden, Maine, and Wilmington, Delaware; Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, Wisconsin; and the Bennington Center for the Arts in Bennington, Vermont.
In addition, her works have been on display at many galleries and museums in ten states, from Maryland all the way to Wyoming. Among the Maryland galleries, she exhibits at the Steven Scott Gallery in Owings Mills, McBride Gallery in Annapolis, and the Troika Gallery in Easton.
