About
Welcome!
I am a Long Beach, California-based artist and illustrator creating watercolor paintings, multimedia drawings and comics.
I came to watercolor by way of urban sketching—filling sketchbooks with illustrated accounts of travel or interesting scenes on my daily commute. Throughout the years, I formalized my painting process by moving out of the travel journal, but I am still enamored with subject matter that reflects narrative moments or reveals the character of a place.
I am drawn to the medium of watercolor for the way it allows me to introduce and explore light, as so often light has unique personality traits in different places. Taking the time to guide the paint and giving it space to flow demands that I slow down and strike a balance between the course the paint wants to travel and where I want to direct it. Building in layers, the idea often unfolds as the painting takes shape. I have not mastered it, but that is why I keep returning to this beautiful medium.
When I’m not painting, I am devouring mystery novels, mothering two incredible kiddos and squeezing in the time to also work on a mystery genre graphic novel, The Long Grave, currently appearing as a webcomic at www.thelonggrave.com. If you love whodunnits as I do, please check it out!
Thank you for being here!
Courtney
Past Clients
Recent work includes editorial illustration for The Weather Channel (here and here) promotional illustration for the Durango Tourism Office, poster and graphic design for the Off Broadway production of The Eternal Space, poster design for the New York Association of Bretons, and custom illustrated announcements and commissioned paintings.
Exhibitions
November-December 2017, Art Exchange of Long Beach Holiday Salon, Long Beach, CA, Curator: Ronald Nelson, Executive Director of Long Beach Museum of Art
August 2017, "Cafe Sketches: Artists' Travel Drawings and Paintings" , Perry and Carlson Gallery, Mount Vernon, Washington
January-February 2017, AZ Aqueous XXXI, Juror: artist Monica Warhol. Tubac Center of the Arts, Tubac, Arizona
July 2016, "Color" Juried Exhibition, Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition, Juror: Lilian Tone, Assistant Curator at the Museum of Modern Art; Brooklyn, New York
April-August 2016, "How Sweet It Is" Solo Exhibition; Steeplechase Coffee, Brooklyn, New York
Awards
Honorable Mention, AZ Aqueous XXXI, Tubac Center for the Arts, 2016
Memberships
Associate Member, National Watercolor Society
Associate Member, California Watercolor Association