Merrimack River Painters

 

Painting with Acrylic is like a golf game, you hit the ball straight to a goal. Painting with Watercolor is like tennis, you hit the ball over a net, never knowing where it is going and when it is going to come back.

Dabbling in a New Medium

By Susan Levenson

 

After a lifetime in the arts, 2020 is the year I began to dabble with Acrylics. Even before the pandemic hit I had begun this year by creating variety, wonderment, movement, and joy with acrylic paint. I have tried to work both abstractly and realistically white adjusting and adapting to my new delight.

 Since Experimenting with this new medium, the magic of the opaque,  I know watercolor will always be my first love. I love the fluidity. I love to watch it disperse and join other hues develop into pools of luminous delicious paint. I miss the spontaneity and transparency.

On the other hand, acrylics, I feel, to be a more calculating medium which invites a system of filling predetermined spaces and determining color combinations.

But voila!

A mistake or poor judgement, just paint over it. In watercolor you are stuck.

My whole life has been “beachy” it is where I live. Recording the experience of the seacoast, the boats and harbors, docks and piers are important to me. I am looking forward to capturing the joy of shape and light of the sea in new and exciting styles in the future.

These acrylic paintings that I am showcasing here are the beginnings of the new adventure ahead. For me, they are already communicating new ideas and visions.