Book of Water -Intro Water Portrait by Artist Deborah Chapin

2015 will be the third year of working on my newest portfolio of Water Portraits and to date unseen works.  It has been slow going… but it would be misleading to say it only took me three years to arrive at this point.  I’ve not been one of the lucky ones who had the opportunity to study 4-5 years in an academic setting but this doesn’t mean I haven’t been studying.   I took classes along the way,  starting with a workshop with Mary Ekroos , Daniel Greene back in the 80s somewhere, then Raymond Kinstler and then Sam Adoquei’s Academic Atelier at the National Academy in the 90s while I continued actually earning a living with landscape /seascape plein air paintings.    Through all of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune I kept exploring until all the puzzle pieces began to fit.   My final leg of the artistic journey will be the combination of what I have been painting, water, with something I have only touched upon until now, portraiture.

News Article:

Excerpt from Article on Hampton’s Art Hub Women Painting Women 2015
https://hamptonsarthub.com/2015/10/03/women-painting-women-at-rjd-gallery/

So I have followed Sargent’s advice, following the path for 35 years of exploring and painting everything else first and finally portraits.    My kind of portrait, with water untethering the model from the restraints of reality and gravity, developing the interaction with line and color and dreaming in reality.

For those who still like to be tethered to the beach fear not,  it is still in the mix,  I am still working on those as well and still love doing them.  The figure en plein air.   There are many facets to an artist’s career and the artist must be an explorer.