The title of this post is a bit tongue in cheek but also a deliberate statement: There is nothing not serious about watercolour as a medium – just take a look at work by Carol Robertson.
Which is not to say my efforts in any way compare, simply that a recent watercolour workshop which I ran with Joanna Jones, co-director with me of DAD, and artist Helen Lindon was great fun and also an ‘excuse’ to step sideways. Not having worked in watercolour for absolutely ages, it did feel a bit nerve-wracking.
The workshop was for all abilities and it was a day for discovering or rediscovering the pleasure of painting and not a “how to do it” event. There was no single leader or facilitator and the expertise in the room was available for everyone to draw on if they needed to, and at the same time everyone was there as participant, making the composition of the group as equal as possible.
I decided at the last minute as I was leaving the house to take some pages from an auction catalogue of Chinese export ware that had been discovered in a wreck in the Malacca Straits. As soon as I was using paper as a material, I was happy!
