March 5, 2026

I find myself wrestling - somewhat literally - with watercolor, and - somewhat surprisingly for my usual amount of patience with difficult things - enjoying it. It’s a big change in medium for me. I’m used to acrylics, which are forgiving, bold, messy, and something that lets me paint and repaint and scrape back and tweak and change until I’m done.

Watercolor lets me do none of those things. It needs me to know what I’m doing. It needs planning, pre-sketching, thinking about light and working with the white of the paper. It’s hard to correct. It requires restraint, delicacy, and gentleness.

I am none of those things! And so we struggle together, watercolor and I, to see what we can make.

This piece is painted from memory and inspired by one of my favorite places close to Santa Cruz, CA.