Grace Peters

Statement
For many years I explored letter forms and the expressive integration of lettering, written text and painting, drawing inspiration from abstract expressionist painters: Bradley Walker Tomlin, Jackson Pollock, Franz Klein, Hans Hoffmann, Richard Diebenkorn, Robert Motherwell; as well as noted twentieth century calligraphers: Rudolph Koch, David Howells, Werner Schneider, Charles Pierce, Thomas Ingmire, Suzanne Moore, Donald Jackson and others.

In 1992, following a debilitating and extended bout with tendonitis in my wrists, I was no longer able to spend hours at a time working at fine lettering with steel nibs and pen holders. Turning to brushes and watercolor painting as a creative outlet, initially I taught myself basic watercolor techniques through Michael Crespo’s fine course in book form, Watercolor Day by Day, and later Jeffrey Camp’s Paint: A Manual of Pictorial Thought and Practical Advice. In his book, Camp placed looking at the world and copying from the great painters – including Rubens, Van Gogh, Bonnard, Hockney, Picasso – at the center of learning to paint. I continue to gain much from studying and copying works of great masters. It is a challenging, as well as pleasant opportunity to spend quiet, intimate time with an artist, like getting acquainted over a cup of coffee or tea.

At about the same time that I took up watercolors, I started to work as a Spanish language medical interpreter. I gained a new appreciation for the reproductions of paintings and prints that hung in public areas throughout the hospital where I worked. The presence of these spots of beauty, expressions of artistic sensibility, creative energy, the human spirit, served as an anchor and a levee in the midst of great anguish, suffering and tedium.

Perhaps because of the constant exposure to pain and a more urgent sense of the fleeting nature of time, I turned to painting in watercolors as a means of paying attention, staying present, and observing carefully the things around me. When I travel, I carry a sketchbook, scribble notes, make little painted sketches, and buy postcards that depict what I can’t capture with a pen, pencil or brush. It’s a lovely and quiet means to remain aware and later recall a day, a place, a moment gone by.