'I grew up in Bedford and from about lower school, whenever anyone asked me, “what do you want to be when you grow up?" The response was always, “I want to be an artist”. So I studied art, namely photography and ceramics, all the way through school. My pieces of art followed me around as we moved from house to house... but then one day my dad’s basement got flooded and I lost most of my works. Many of the ceramics were also smashed during the moves,’ says water colourist and acrylic painter, Jennifer Savage.
For the past twenty years, Jennifer has worked in insurance, though, since picking up the paintbrush again in her twenties, she has continued to paint in her spare time – ‘half the time in acrylic and the rest of the time using watercolour, especially in the spring,’ she says. Over these years she has continued to refine her skillset and has taken up numerous online challenges, such as creating a painting and uploading an image of it to social media everyday – ‘though I think so many of my followers on Instagram muted me as a result!’ Jennifer laughs.
We haven’t observed many water-colourists in the magazine, so it is interesting to explore two here –Jennifer and, in our next article, Catalina – to see the variety of styles and patterns that can be produced by such a vibrant art form. It is also essential, due to the stigma attached to watercolours, to provide a platform for such artists. This is primarily because watercolours are seen as being a beginners’ medium and so are frequently left out of being presented in galleries or even sold online. Yet whilst it is often said that watercolours may be the easiest to work with at first, it is undoubtedly one of the hardest mediums to master.
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