The Watercolor Paintings of Elizabeth Sullivan

Ten years ago artist Elizabeth Sullivan moved into a studio apartment. That little event sparked a career as a watercolor painter. Although she had been painting, drawing, dying fabrics and doing sculpture since she was very young, Ms. Sullivan was forced to take up watercolors in her small space, because there was no room for other media.

That small experiment has expanded exponentially and her southwestern watercolor images of horses and other wildlife are now internationally known. Her paintings have been published as art prints in Sweden and distributed to the US and Europe, and have been licensed to companies who have produced area rugs, greeting cards, coasters and more. The small apartment is long gone, replaced by a studio in her house in Elgin, Texas.

What makes Sullivan's paintings so fascinating? Her large paintings of horses, vaguely reminiscent of cave paintings and pictographs, use vibrant colors of the southwest - yellows, reds, oranges and browns with a little turquoise. Attaining the brilliant colors is not a usual watercolor technique, but Sullivan has used the nature of watercolors - transparency - to layer one color on top of another until they fairly pop off the paper.

In speaking of another feature of the medium of watercolor, Ms. Sullivan says, "Letting the paint flow is an important aspect of watercolor, but it takes some practice to get the paint to flow where you want it to flow." Certainly she has mastered that technique.

"I used to paint a lot more realistically," remarks Ms. Sullivan, " but what I really wanted to express was the graceful and powerful motion of the animals, so as time passes my paintings become more and more ethereal in that expression." Motion is a key concept in her paintings - horses, buffalo, longhorn cattle and even armadillos and horned lizards actually seem to move in her paintings.

Painting motion is what she does best. The horses gallop in play across the page. The mother armadillo waddles along with her four offspring in tow. Buffalo run apparently just for the joy of running. Horned lizards circle, checking each other out.

The paintings communicate a vision of the southwest from a painter with obvious affinity for the subject. The artist has been around horses all her life and if you live in Texas, armadillos will root around in your garden - it's a given. Painting horned lizards is a more recent experiment, but after a patron expressed his interest in them, the artist recalled her childhood fascination with them. Since her first horned lizard painting, Sullivan has met many and various horned lizard enthusiasts - from conservationists working to restore the little beasts to their natural range (they have been decimated by fire ants) to people who just fondly recall having a "horny toad" as a childhood pet (for a few days only since moms were usually not fond of them).

These days you may find artist Elizabeth Sullivan in her studio working on a commissioned painting (with her four cats for company) or on a ladder painting a new mural for the opening of a restaurant. That is, when she isn't at a gallery or weekend art show.

Her work is on view for everyone at her website www.ecsullivanart.com, or contact her via email at ecsullivanart@aol.com.

View the Fine Art by Elizabeth Sullivan at Wild Spirit Artworks