Arc Gallery exhibition: ‘Big Old Watercolors’

Garry Mealor is a professor of art who has taught drawing and watercolor classes for nearly 30 years at UAA. The Arc Gallery – next to the Consortium Library – is hosting Mealor’s 200th exhibition, “Big Old Watercolors,” featuring three distinct approaches to watercolor.

The Arc Gallery features Mealor’s paintings “Shades of Blinds,” “Mind Meander,” “Cat’s Cradle” and the three perspectives of “Orange in the Copper.” These paintings fill the room with their larger than life imagery.

Before Mealor begins to paint on his final canvas, he first creates a study. A study is when the artist essentially paints a rough draft of the final painting. Mealor painted his studies on an area about a quarter the size of the final project.

Mealor also used his study for his watercolor students to see changes that occur in the process of creating an art piece.

Mealor uses transparent watercolor – meaning he does not use any white paint or premixed black paint. The use of transparent watercolor renders the artist unable to cover any mistakes that may be made.

Mealor said he would watercolor a highly realistic piece and then wash it out. He threw in primary and secondary colors with water while watching as everything blended together. Mealor then waited for it to dry before going back to the painting and touching it up.

“I lay them flat on my studio floor, and I just go crazy. Get spray bottles, cups, paint, everything and dump it and just totally saturate it. Things just start to blend around - it's actually kind of fun,” said Mealor.

Mealor uses wooden dowels underneath the paper to direct the water. He places primary colors to blend on the paper to create secondary colors, but the artist must be careful not to let the secondary colors mix into mud.

In his painting “Shades of Blinds,” Mealor said he had a lot of fun painting in a way he had never done before. He found his inspiration in a lecture he attended some time ago.

Mealor said the lecture encouraged artists to try something they never had before. Changing composition and “approach a painting in a way that is totally alien,” said Mealor.

Mealor said he broke every rule he normally has when completing a painting. “The perspective in this is all wrong ... I usually spend a lot of time on composition, this one, I just measured everything off by five inches.”

“Shades of Blinds” is also the only watercolor Mealor has done with colored pencil and the only painting he has done professionally with an opaque watercolor called gouache.

The difficulty in this piece originates at the first thought of a painting like “Shades of Blinds”.

“You have to know where all your highlights are at the very beginning because you can't cover up anything. If you do make a mistake, it has to become part of the painting,” said Mealor.

Watercolor is Mealor’s only medium. “You're never going to master it, in my opinion, that's why I love it. Because it's something that, even now after all these years, it still gets frustrating.”

“Sometimes you come up with a painting that is better than what you intended… I like the idea that nothing is going to come easy. There's always going to be a lot of risk, things aren't always going to go your way and you better be able to deal with it. Roll with the brushes,” said Mealor.