Basket Weaver, 21 x 21 inches, watercolor and gouache
on paper.
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heavily patterned with bright pinkish-red flowers and swirling lines in purple
and green. She wears heavy gold jewelry. The figure’s clothing and environ-ment
provide a strong contrast to her dejected body language and somber
expression.
“I decorated her a lot as a sort of contrast to the bad news she is getting in
the letter; she is all dressed up and there is some conflict in that,” Mauney says.
Mauney prefers to work with granulated paints, meaning that the pigment
particles do not fully dissolve in water. This allows her to maintain the integrity
of different colors while capitalizing on the medium’s capacity for blending and
soft lines.
“Even when the paint is wet, you can add 10 more layers and it’s not going
to completely mix,” she says. “You will always be able to see individual colors;
you can tilt the paper but it will always keep them separate.”
Mauney develops the backgrounds by layering water and paint from a
simple palette of primary colors. Once the surface is complete, she sketches her
image on top and then will paint more precisely, but the intuitive process of
layering color and water is her favorite step.
“The best part is the beginning, where you’re being really wild and throwing
paint down,” she says. “If you’re working on a piece of wet paper and you put
color down, it may not go where you want it to. The serendipity of watercolor is
especially exciting to me.”
HE EMOTIONAL AND TECHNICAL capacity of Mauney’s cho-sen
medium is visible in other portrait works.
“Men Friends” depicts two older men sitting at a pub-style
table; one looks down at his phone and the other stares
absentmindedly through dark sunglasses. The surface is a
hazy mix of yellow, blue and red. Several layers of water and
paint have been applied, creating a misty blur between the picture planes
that grants the otherwise simple composition a feeling of confusion or lack of
clarity.
Though the title and their shared table suggest that the two men know each
other, they aren’t interacting. The inspiration came from a real-life scene. The
irony of their physical proximity and lack of engagement is what prompted
Mauney to snap a photo and recreate it in paint.
“One of the men is staring off into space and the other is looking down at his
phone. To me that was a pretty humorous social commentary on male friend-ships,”
she says. “These two men were not really relating to each other at all;
they were together, but still so separate.”
“Night Train,” which depicts an older man in profile, sitting alone on a train,
is one of Mauney’s favorite pieces. The painting is a balance of light and dark,
somber and beautiful. The man holds a folded newspaper close to his body and
balances a pair of reflective glasses in his lap. Though he looks down toward
the newspaper, his gaze falls slightly above it, focusing on the floor or the wall
in front of him. A light source originating behind the viewer falls brightly on
his forehead. His cheek, shoulder and hand, and the area surrounding him, are
composed of warm reds and yellows. The outer corners darken and are mostly
darker shades and blues.
The image has a melancholic quality that is authentic to the painting’s
subject. Mauney describes seeing the man on a train while traveling with her
daughter and thinking that he looked sad.
Night Train, 14 x 16 inches, watercolor on paper.
Two Apples, 8 x 8 inches, watercolor and gouache on
paper.
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