Tallahassee Watercolor Society January/February 2023 Newsletter

Eluster Richardson paints a lifetime of movement and joy in LeMoyne exhibit

Eluster Richardson returns home to the beloved LeMoyne Arts gallery with a "Passionate Journey" to share his latest landscapes and devotion to motion in his figurative paintings. The exhibit opens Jan. 19 and runs through Feb. 25.

A lifetime of art

Richardson surrounds himself with joy and art; his house is known as the gallery by his close friends. Richardson’s urge to paint has consumed him since he was a young boy in the public schools of Tallahassee. Although access and support for the arts were limited, by the 7th grade, his school had an official art room.

There was no turning back for Richardson. He attended Tallahassee Community College, where he won a few awards for his art, and later continued to complete his studies at Florida State University. As it was for many men of the time, Richardson was drafted to Vietnam, where he put down his paintbrush to serve his country admirably.

His military experience in communications eventually led him to a 32-year career as a network engineer for a telephone company. Even in this position, his art dominated his life. “My artwork kind of dominated what I really did all every day,” says Richardson. “I worked hand in hand with the public relation department… creating advertisements along with my engineering duties.”

Decades later, Richardson has grown into a renowned painter known globally for his portraits, landscapes, and watercolors. Still, he remains loyal to Tallahassee. “I grew up here in Tallahassee… As time went on, I wanted to grow with the city. The city is growing in the cultural arts, so I wanted to grow with it; so, here I am,” chuckles Richardson.

Figurative understanding

Many artists that show throughout the Florida coast paint the landscape of St. Mark’s lighthouse or boats along the Carrabelle River. Although Richardson acknowledges its popularity and his take on finding character and culture within the location, he finds himself drawn to form.

“My favorite is figurative work. I love to do people. People in motion, emotion. I paint my daughter 99% of the time; she is a dancer. I use her as a model for my work. She’s been modeling for me since the beginning,” recalls Richardson, “Most people grow up with photo albums; she grew up with paintings. These paintings are all over the country, nationally. Of course, that’s the legacy I will leave her.”

Richardson fondly tells of the proud artistic moment when he crossed the worlds of performance and dance with art. He arranged, studied, and painted a series of people in motion, dancing and moving. His work evokes emotion that leaped off the screen, joining bodies in movement by the dancers who attended. The exhibition was a culmination of Richardson’s ability to find and share emotion through painting.

Returning Home

When Richardson was a young boy under the canopies of Tallahassee, the goal, the dream was to do a show at the Lemoyne Art Gallery. Richardson describes it as the place to be of the 1960s and 70s in the Tallahassee art scene.

This gallery has aged as finely as the artists it produces. Richardson is pleased to return to Lemoyne Art Gallery, where he originated as a junior high school winner of an art competition that ended with his own work benign displayed. Now, he’s honored to bring his latest work to a place that nurtured his curiosity in the world and art itself.

“I used to do the circuit of art festivals. I’ve been from Detroit to Maimi. I was in Coconut Grove for a while,” says Richardson, “Panama City to St. Petersburg, I’ve done all those festivals.” His work has been seen at the Smithsonian in a midwife exhibition, and his artwork was featured as the 1965 Voting Rights Act Official Commemorative Stamp for the United States Post Office.

Yet, Richardson admits he is delighted to return to LeMoyne Arts Gallery for their new exhibition, a Passionate Journey.

“It’s home.” He states, simply but truthfully. Equally, he wishes audiences simply feel what he feels through the series of works he has compiled to show in landscapes and his newest love, 3D bronze sculptures. No matter the medium, his goal remains to tell a story while simultaneously capturing the feeling and movement in the moment.

Richardson’s work will leave you with the impulse toward joy and movement, a feeling that palpably lives in the artist himself.

Charles Townsend

Here is my recent watercolor painting using Fabriano hot-press paper.

The paper was an experiment; 25% cotton rag content; ink and paint stand brightly up rather than sink in;

However, this paper will not allow much lifting without surface damage. Chip

COLLECT Select Exhibition & Silent Auction

Wednesday January 25, 12pm – Saturday January 28, 10pm

The Collect select exhibition & silent auction presents exquisite contemporary art by Florida and Southern artists who were selected by a team of art collectors, on view in the Sara May Love Gallery at Gadsden Arts. Artwork on view and for sale by: Natalia Andreeva, Steve Andrews, Clyde Butcher, Niki Butcher, Joe Claborn, Mark Georgiades, Chuck Manning, Mark Messersmith, William H. McKeown, Danny O’Driscoll, Eluster Richardson, Joe Roache, and Dan Taylor.

Registration for the auction is free, bidding is online and via our auction app Wednesday, January 25 at 12pm through Saturday, January 28 at 10pm.

How to Choose the right Round Watercolor Brush

Faced with the vast array of watercolor brushes available from artists’ suppliers, even a fairly experienced painter might feel a little daunted. Diana Craig explains why round brushes are a good, all-rounder option and tests some of the best on the market.

Visiting an art shop or browsing any art supplies catalogue is a bit like looking into an Aladdin’s cave – it’s so full of goodies you don’t where to start. If you want to buy watercolor brushes, you’ll be confronted with rounds and flats, hakes and mops, filberts and fans and riggers.

In addition, you’ll be required to choose between a range of different fibers, from sable to squirrel to synthetic. You may ultimately want a comprehensive collection of brushes for a variety of different tasks, but for versatility it’s hard to beat a medium-sized No.8 or No.10 brush.

Calling these brushes ‘round’ is perhaps misleading because the heads more closely resemble a teardrop in shape, being rounded towards the base and slimming down to a point at the tip. It’s this shape that’s behind the versatility of the round brush, and a lot of work goes into getting it just right. The ‘belly’ (the bulbous part) needs to be in the lower part of the head. If it’s higher up, the brush will lack the required springiness. The belly is the brush’s reservoir – it’s where most of the wet paint is held. Applying gentle but firm pressure as you draw the brush across the paper opens out the head and releases the paint retained in the belly so that it flows onto the surface, to create bands of color. Lightly touching the head to the paper means that less paint feeds through to the tip, allowing you to control your marks more and produce finer lines. Of course, you won’t be conscious of this process – it’s something you do instinctively.

The hair or fiber from which the head is made also determines how much paint it will hold and how well it will spring back into shape during use – and therefore how controllable the brush will be. The length of the handle is another factor to consider. Shorter handles seem to invite a tighter grip, and many artists find a length of around 15cm is the most comfortable to use and gives the greatest flexibility.

Holding a longer handle close to the ferrule offers increased control and thus finer marks, holding it further down for looser wrist action and freer brushwork.

Sable

Sable is the aristocrat of brush hairs, with Kolinsky sable being the very finest. Red sable brushes are also of extremely high quality. The structure of this natural animal hair means that it holds liquid – and therefore watercolour – exceptionally well. It is also resilient, springing back into shape quickly. As always, though, you get what you pay for and sable isn’t cheap. But the good news is that, cared for properly, it can last for years. All of the sables tested performed well. In the No. 8 size, Da Vinci do a lovely Maestro Kolinsky that holds a good amount of paint and forms a fine point, and its long, tapering 17cm handle makes for real ease of use; an excellent choice. Rosemary & Co’s mail order selection offers a No. 8 Kolinsky that has good colour-retention properties but the head did not hold its shape as well as some others, and its shorter handle might inhibit loose brushwork. The Van Gogh range produced by Royal Talens includes a No. 8 red sable. Like the others, it retained a good density of color and its slimmer head formed a fine point for detailed work, but it had a shorter handle – the Rembrandt No.8 pure sable from the same company was better in this respect, while Pro Arte’s Renaissance No. 8 sable had a long handle and felt good to hold.

Sometimes using a larger brush than you think you might need can free up the marks you make, and among the No. 10 sables available, Rosemary & Co’s pure sable is a good choice, although the handle is shorter than some may like, while Royal Talens Rembrandt pure Kolinsky, with its good, full head, scored high on all points.

Ox and squirrel hair

Although these are both natural fibers like sable, the difference in performance between the two groups is surprising. Manufacturers obviously strive for the highest quality but even they are limited by the nature of the material they are working with. Some of the brushes tested in this group recall those that used to come (and probably still do) as part of inexpensive children’s watercolor sets. They held color fairly well, but the heads seemed to be somewhat floppy with little resilience, which makes them harder to control and to achieve the marks you want. Of those tested, Rosemary & Co’s No.10 squirrel fared best.

Sable blend

In an attempt to give their customers the best of both worlds in terms of both quality and price, manufacturers have come up with a clever solution: the sable blend, a mixture of sable and synthetic fibre. Pro Arte’s Connoisseur No.10 sable blend is a good choice here, as it holds a fair amount of colour, has a reasonable degree of spring and forms an adequate point for finer work; the same can be said of Rosemary & Co’s series 401 sable blend.

Synthetics

Given that there is not a scrap of sable hair in their composition, brushes made of synthetic fibres such as nylon are an impressive lot. Shape retention and the firmness and springiness of the head were notable characteristics of all those tested. Durability is another of their qualities. Da Vinci’s No.8 Cosmotop Spin could give natural-fiber brushes a fair run for their money. It holds color well and the head is nicely springy and forms a reasonable point. Van Gogh selected filament No.8 and Rosemary & Co’s Designer No.10 are also springy, point well, and hold a reasonable amount of color. If you can’t afford sable or even sable blends, synthetics are the way to go.