The Creative Entrepreneur Fellowship 2025 application is open now.
Zach Fitchner
“I want to build a network that helps me with my art by providing the insights that are only discovered by interacting with other artists, hearing their experiences, and sharing stories.”
Zach Fitchner came to West Virginia in 2015 to join the West Virginia State University Art Department as an assistant professor. He is now an associate professor of Art, has served as Gallery director, chaired the Cultural Activities Committee and been involved in projects ad collectives with his local community. It was his eleventh relocation since growing up in Georgia and Florida. In all of that time, he learned making community connections are as important to his success as the equipment and talents he brings to his artistic work.
“My work utilizes print media, drawing, installation and photography to investigate our identity and its connection with memory and our shared human experiences,” Zach said. “To succeed, I need to build a network that provides me with the insights that are only discovered by interacting with others, hearing about their experiences and storytelling.”
Developing networks can be a challenge when you work full-time, devote time to your studio practice, and raise a family.
“Once you leave school, your communities can vanish and you have to work to build and maintain new ones,” he said. “That’s something I tell all of my students: While you are here, understand your classmates struggles as much as your own and you will discover that you succeed together. When you leave school, find a place where you belong.”
Zach realized he had an interest in art in early adolescence. Though it is difficult for him to pinpoint an exact moment, when pressed he suggests it was when he designed his fifth-grade graduation ceremony program.
“Memories like that motivated me to continue to pursue art,” he said. “I started as a psychology major at the University of North Florida but quickly switched to art with a concentration in painting. That was until I took a printmaking course. It was an eye-opening experience that connected by interest in stamping, repetition, half-tone dots and other hallmarks of printed visual vocabulary.”
He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from University of North Florida and his Master of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Arizona.
“My values and upbringing closely align with the spirit and origins of printmaking,” he said. “Prints are a wonderful way to share your creative expression and are an accessible art form due to their multiplicity and pricing, especially in comparison to painting and sculpture, the darlings of the art market.
Zach tries to see art in a broader sense by imagining its universal characteristics and appeal. “I see it as being highly important and one of the things that makes life worthwhile because with art you can make incredibly tough concepts understandable and give abstract concepts actual form,” he said.
His own art uses print media, drawing, installation and photography to investigate our identity, our connections with memory and, more broadly, to present lines of inquiry that relate our shared human experience and purpose.
“In much of my work I depict symbols of sanctuary like burning homes and cars to highlight prevalent themes of loss and despair in today’s world and to emphasize that safety, values and comfort are universal needs,” Zach said. “Without drawing direct comparisons, I emphasize the importance of understanding events in their historical context by merging mediums like copper, ink and paper.
“I want to spark introspection and dialogue on human vulnerability in a rapidly changing world,” he said. “This illustrates the power of art to confront and transform darkness.”
Recently he has added mezzotint to his work. This is a print technique he uses to bring forth images from darkness. The Tamarack Foundation Emerging Fellowship gives Zach an opportunity to improve his own work and develop the West Virginia network he is eager to grow.
“I will invest some of the grant money in equipment,” he said. Printmaking requires some expensive equipment and he is interested in purchasing an etching press and other studio essentials. He also would like to add or improve other print and photography equipment and supplies.
“This fellowship will help me with that, financially, and the programming we are offered through the fellowship will help with improving my strategies for producing and selling my creative work,” he said.
His other hope of developing a strong network lies in his interest in collaboration and camaraderie. Zach has experience in the value of both.
In the past, he participated in printmakers’ networks that resulted in his work being placed in private and public collections in seventeen states and in Egypt, Slovakia and Australia.
“Printmakers exchange groups organize exhibits based on specific themes and topics,” he said. “Participants make a certain number of prints and the exchange organizer will divvy them up and ship them back to everyone. Popular exchanges are often acquired by universities, museums and other supportive institutions with a shared interest in print media.”
This kind of project allows artists to get to know one another and share experiences and knowledge. Since he moved to West Virginia, Zach has worked on collaborative projects at the Clay Center for the Arts and Sciences. He was involved with “The Outings Project”, “Do It! Exhibit”, and “For Freedoms Project” at the Juliet Art Museum.
With aspirations of expanding his presence nationally and internationally, Zach hopes to establish long-term partnerships with galleries that share his values and represent similarly focused artwork. He is interested in establishing an art foundation institute to support emerging artists in local communities. “I am endlessly thankful for the valuable resources I could access through Pyramid Atlantic Arts Center, Pittsburgh Print Group and Chicago Printmakers Collaborative,” he said. “I see the potential for West Virginia printmakers to form an initiative that could merge with the nonprofit Columbus Printed Arts Center. By combining resources, we could establish a robust platform for artists to thrive and make a lasting impact on the local arts scene while building a practical and sustainable hub for growth and collaboration.”
Sara Cottingham
“Art taps into parts of being human that we cannot explain but that we feel powerfully.”
Sara Cottingham is a multimedia artist working in relief printing and pastels. In addition to her work as a visual artist, she has had a successful career in community development and grant writing.
“I’m lucky to be somebody who has lots of different skills and interests,” Sara said. “Art and music were always part of my life, but I grew up in a family where it was assumed if you were a smart kid, you’d have a traditional career, like a doctor or lawyer. I didn’t want to be either of those things, but I am really driven so I decided I wanted to work in environmental issues, go to the mountains, and help rural communities.”
Sara, a fifth generation Texan, was drawn to West Virginia by her love of music. “The banjo was what brought me to West Virginia initially. Because I play old-time music, I had a fascination with the culture here, the sense of place and the folklore.”
An adventurous person by nature, Sara has lived in seven states, yet none have captivated her quite like West Virginia.
“The things I love about this state, its natural environment and rural communities, its post-industrial landscapes—all those things carry over to my art,” she said. “It’s been interesting to see how these different threads in my life have tied together.”
Although she has always been a creative person, it wasn’t until she was in her mid-twenties that she began building a serious creative practice in the visual arts.
“When I first moved to West Virginia, I had a group of friends who were pursuing careers outside of traditional expectations, working as sculptors, woodworkers, and potters. I’d always felt driven to make stuff but during that period of my life, that desire just got stronger.”
Sara began taking art classes at West Virginia State University while living in the Charleston area, getting her start in pastels and charcoal. At the time, they felt more accessible to her as a gateway into visual art. She later attended a printmaking workshop at an art center in Washington D.C, the first of many she would take.
“In the decade since those first courses at West Virginia State University, I have honed my skills through self-study, and workshops through Pyramid Atlantic Art Center (Hyattsville, MD), AVA Gallery & Art Center (Lebanon, NH), the Torpedo Factory (Alexandria, VA), the John C. Campbell Folk School (Brasstown, NC), and Yestermorrow Design Build School (Waitsfield, VT).”
Sara is a methodical artist, and the complex process of printmaking resonated with her from the start.
“I’m very meticulous,” Sara said. “I love going into the weeds with details and I enjoy the physicality of printmaking. It’s a multilayered process of drawing your image, transferring it to the block backward so you can carve it, and finally inking and printing it.”
Each medium offers Sara something unique in terms of process and result. While pastels are typically used to create gestural, imprecise images, Sara takes a more detailed approach, creating the effect of a colorful painting. Many of her prints are done in black and white, though some are painted with watercolor.
“The black and white is great for when I am trying to capture stark images, especially historical ones,” Sara said.
Inspired by the rural communities that have fueled passion in her professional life, Sara’s body of work reflects the history and spirit of those spaces. “My goal is to render images that are realistic and true forms, yet also imaginative and evocative,” she said.
Because of the demand her career placed on her time, Sara had to be selective about the opportunities she pursued for her art. One meaningful project for was the “Lost Towns of the Mon “installation for Elkins’ Tygart Hotel in 2023.
“When Woodlands Development put out a call for artists to create pieces for the hotel that tied to the timber history of the Mon Region, I jumped on that,” Sara said. “Completing the project brought so many aspects of my life together. I currently serve as the grant writer for the twelve gateway towns of the Mon National Forest, and I love those communities. Honoring their history was important as they work on reinventing themselves to find a sustainable path forward.”
Another significant experience for Sara was her participation in a 2018 contest and show in Weirton, where she created two pastel pieces memorializing the Weirton Steel Mill before it was demolished. She has participated in several other shows and installations throughout West Virginia between the years 2016 and 2023.
“All the projects I’ve done tie in with the idea of capturing the meaning of a place and its change over time,” Sara said.
A critical moment for Sara came in 2023, when she faced serious health issues that caused her to reconsider aspects of her professional life.
“My downturn in health gave me the push I needed to leave the consulting firm I’d been at for seven years and begin the process of starting my own business,” Sara said. “Becoming self-employed allows me to continue the work I’m passionate about as a grant writer while finally making the time and space to launch my art as a serious business.”
Over the years, there has been a dissonance between Sara’s professional and creative life, and she is ready to break down those boundaries.
“I’m at a juncture in my life where I can reinvent the narrative that has me doing art in the shadows. I get to own all the aspects of my life and bring them together.”
In the immediate future, Sara plans to take a graduate printmaking class at West Virginia University. Her goal is to refine her technical skills on the printing press to open new opportunities for her art.
With the support and accountability provided by the Tamarack Foundation Creative Entrepreneurship Fellowship, Sara is looking forward to launching a website and finding an equilibrium in all her pursuits.
“I am a creative but I’m also an entrepreneur, with multiple businesses including a rental property in Morgantown. It’s important to me that I can create a life of balance, which includes a meaningful professional and creative career.”
Amanda Jane Miller
“Part of our job as artists is to challenge our perceptions by seeing our surroundings in ways that go beyond our own cultural context…”
Amanda Jane Miller is a multidisciplinary artist working in watercolor, digital illustration, textiles, and fiber.
Following her studies at West Virginia University, Amanda started a career in digital media production. Since transitioning out of video production in 2019, she moved into garment work, learning screen printing and embroidery. She is working at Kin Ship Goods in Charleston.
Amanda took her first college art classes while still in high school, an experience that shaped how she viewed her work and her future in the arts.
“It was illuminating to be outside of my high school environment, surrounded by kids with similar artistic aspirations,” said Amanda. “Professors taking me seriously at that age was very empowering and finding that community sparked a desire to pursue art professionally.”
While she admits pursuing a creative career felt natural to her, it has not been without its challenges. She meets those challenges by taking advantage of her diverse skillset, adapting to meet needs that arise.
“Growing up seeing my dad working in music had a big impact on my choice to have a career in the arts,” said Amanda. “I saw how he adapted to all the ups and downs of being an artist while supporting our family. That’s the mentality I have toward all my different branches of creativity. When one thing isn’t working, I look at what people are responding to and turn to that as a useful outlet.”
Amanda is inspired by the relationship between West Virginia’s natural environment and its people over time, often painting scenes from nature with a surrealist twist. She describes her work as a place where love of history, language and forest combine to explore the interplay between internal thought and external action.
“Working primarily with ink and watercolor, I want to make pockets of time and space for thought, reflection, and rest. Much of my work deals with heavy themes of isolation and pain, but remains visually comforting, like the illustrated books of my childhood which have fueled the escapism so vital to my art process,” said Amanda.
“To me, being a multidisciplinary artist means striving for the highest level of expression and skill possible in my chosen mediums,” she said. “I see that as a focused endeavor that is different from ongoing experimentation or dabbling in a bit of everything.”
Each of her disciplines has something different to offer in terms of practice and product.
“I keep coming back to watercolor because you can keep the pigment tightly controlled, or let it do what it wants with lots of water and be unpredictable,” she said. “It’s freeing to let go of parts of the process and allow the medium to lead me.”
In contrast to her innovations with fine arts, Amanda finds herself drawn to the methodology of traditional crafts. She learned how to spin wool while working on a sheep farm in 2014, later learning traditional weaving on her grandmother’s jack floor loom. She compares the process of working with textiles to a bike ride, noting that the decision-making involved is less overwhelming than with fine art.
“I like how there’s a definitive way to do things with room for individual expression. My textile work is very traditional, using old weaving patterns, bobbin lace, and hand spun thread,” said Amanda. “Sometimes I can reach a deeper creative flow state in a traditional craft versus painting where I can get stuck on decisions.”
Looking for ways to keep her work fresh, Amanda is interested in integrating textiles into her painting and printing. “I am working on mixing disciplines more, though I am still figuring out what that process will look like,” said Amanda. “At the same time, I am honing my illustration work, trying to leave old imagery behind.”
In 2022, Amanda was a speaker on the FestivAll episode of Three Things and was interviewed by The Mountain Made Podcast. This year, she was interviewed for an article by Tri-State Living. In the past, Amanda has also participated in performance art through venues like FestivAll and has appeared in both group and solo shows with the now-closed Apartment Earth Gallery in Charleston. Her work has been featured in various galleries throughout West Virginia and her weaving appeared in WV Living Magazine in 2021.
“I’ve been lucky to have so many different outlets for my work. I feel stagnant when I work in the same medium for too long and my opportunities have reflected that, which I’m grateful for. But the most valuable thing I’ve gained from it all is connecting with people in the moment over art.”
For Amanda, art is therapeutic. It brings people together, allowing audience and artist to share a meaningful sensory experience. “Art heals me on a physiological level daily,” said Amanda. “It can also be a catharsis for artist and audience. It should on some level tell a truth, whatever that means to you.”
Amanda hopes to do more collaboration with fellow artists. One benefit she has already seen through the Tamarack Foundation Creative Entrepreneurship Fellowship is her camaraderie with the other fellows.
“These are artists I consider successful, whose work I admire, so it feels like a special privilege to hear what they’re working on, what they’re worried about, the practical obstacles we’re all dealing with to keep making art,” she said.
The fellowship has provided Amanda with resources she can use to develop her artistic practice while gaining practical tools she needs to plan for the future of her business.
“It’s easy to isolate at my drawing table, so opening my creative process to other artists who have experience and expertise and the desire to help is an honor,” said Amanda. “We’ve received coaching from a financial planner for artists, which I found interesting. It reminded me that, though it’s daunting, the business side of my creative work is something I can handle.”
Amanda has a long-term goal to do more traveling, which she sees as an essential part of creating.
“It’s our job as artists to present different interpretations of what’s happening in the world. I think getting outside of our immediate physical surroundings, even just to the next town over, is one way to do that,” she said. “Someday, I’d love to do an artist residency somewhere else and be open to the influence of other artists working in their own context.”
Matt Smith
“There are a million reasons not to get started but I’m determined to make myself show up and do good work. It’s important to my art.”
Matt Smith is a Raleigh County native with a passion for his art. He envisions a time when that passion becomes an economically viable career in which he can share his artistic vision with others.
“My family has a long history of working in the trades in southern West Virginia,” says Matt. “Watching them dedicate their energies to hard work on the job and at home fuels my desire for high-level craftsmanship and a workman-like attitude of showing up every day and doing the best I can.”
Matt’s interest in art began in grade school where he worked on the yearbook. At Greater Beckley Christian Academy, a teacher encouraged Matt to work on the yearbook.
“I was excited to experiment with art programs such as Microsoft Publisher and an old version of Photoshop,” he said. “I knew I loved visual things, but just didn’t have the vocabulary for any of it. That teacher introduced me to graphic arts, which was an easier sell to my folks than painting or illustration would have been when I wanted to go to college.”
With his parents’ encouragement, Matt headed to Marshall University where he pursued a degree in Fine Arts and was the first member of his family to attend college. He studied graphic design and print making.
“When I started to take painting seriously, I was drawn to the work of N.C. Wyeth and Jesper Ejsing because of their abilities to convey realism and light as well as fantastic situations and creatures,” Matt said. “When I later saw the work of Wayne Thiebaud, I was moved by the unmistakable feeling that painting is what I am supposed to do.”
Although he got his start in watercolors, today Matt’s work includes oil, acrylic and mixed media painting on canvas and wood panels, digital painting and illustration, and giclee print reproductions of that work. He is building his own canvas stretchers and wooden frames using woodworking skills he learned in his grandfather’s wood shop.
“My work is driven by my life experiences and by Appalachian culture and landscapes,” he said. “I focus on the mysteries and imaginings I cultivated as a boy in the forests of southern West Virginia where dragons hid in rhododendrons and magic came from under rocks in the creek bed. I also enjoy painting images that are personal, like the food I grew with my father and the quilts my grandmother made for me,” he said.
Matt hopes when people see his art it reminds them of their own values and memories. He hopes people, especially in Appalachia, recognize the immense beauty and significance of this place and throw off old stereotypes and prejudices that haunt the region. He wants to make a living from art while still making his work affordable and accessible to people who largely think art is outside their means.
“The Tamarack Foundation Emerging Fellowship program offers me the opportunity to pursue the business and communications aspects of being an artist as well as time to focus on my art,” he said. “I really look forward to getting to know a group of people – artists – with whom I can talk about artistic processes — talking shop and feeding off of each other’s creative spirit remind me showing up and doing the work really does count.”
“I am deeply invested in being part of the larger community of creative people here in West Virginia and Appalachia,” he said. “These are the people who intimately understand the struggles, beauty, biases and rewards of trying to make art here in West Virginia. I want to collaborate with other artists and like-minded people who are here to stay and want to lift others up the same way I do.”
“With the fellowship’s resources, I have the opportunity to learn more about self-promotion and social media as well as ways to improve my financial literacy which are important in becoming self-sustaining today,” he said.
Matt is taking his show on the road to build visibility. In 2023, he participated in more than 20 marketing events, including Charleston’s FestivALL and the Crafted Social in Lexington, Ky. He exhibited his work at the Beckley Arts Center. Several West Virginia retail businesses carry his work.
He is developing a business plan that will allow him to sell his work at a wholesale capacity. He would like to work with a person who can schedule media posts, ship orders and do administrative work so he can focus on new artwork.
Matt is working as a substitute teacher in Kanawha County because it allows him some time to work in his studio, follow leads and build a business plan. He gives as much time as he is able to his artwork.
“When I was getting started, I read The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield and it opened my eyes to a different way of thinking about and looking at creative work,” Matt said. “I was looking for the Great Idea and getting frustrated. Pressfield says you are more likely to do well when you are available and open to ideas – like showing up and clocking in for work.” Matt says approaching his work this way leads to consistent, steady improvement and the feeling that now and then, he’s not the one doing the painting, he’s just holding the brush.
“At the end of the day, I’m setting out to make successful pictures – not only on a technical level – but in a way the picture is able to reach out and touch someone,” he said. “The greater success I’m striving for is to be able to regularly tap into and produce. Like my heroes – Rockwell, Wyeth and Leyendecker – I want to clock in at the easel and paint. Whether or not people see value in what’s painted isn’t up to me, but I can show up and do my job the best I can to make good work. I figure if I keep trying, eventually a great work may emerge. That, to me, is success.”
Peyote Nikolai
“Without art, I don’t know where I would be. It is everything to me, giving me a sense of belonging,
healing my soul and a beacon showing me where I am meant to be.”
Somewhere in their Huntington home, Peyote Nikolai has a picture they drew as a child.
“I was young at the time, and this was a picture of my future self,” Peyote said. “I am all grown up, sitting on a hill in front of an easel and painting. Art has always been part of my life.”
As a child growing up in a blue-collar family, Peyote knew poverty and prejudice. They found solace in painting when they were troubled and unhappy.
“We moved from Kanawha Valley to near Cleveland, Ohio, when I was in fourth grade and, for the first time, lived in a real house, not a trailer,” they recall. “That move saved me and opened my eyes to meeting new people, learning about different cultures and fueling my interest in inclusion, diversity and equity. It gave me the confidence to think about how I wanted to make art.”
In high school, their art teacher, Debbie Pierce, encouraged them and allowed Peyote to stay after school in a work study program. That gave them hope and led to Peyote being named Most Artistic in their senior class.
“I knew I wanted to go to college and was able to get a full scholarship to Marshall University that allowed me to move into the dorm and enter the Fine Arts program,” they said. “I thought I wanted to be a painter because I think I only knew of painting as art, but when I took my first sculpture class, I found myself right at home.”
The equipment in the sculpture studio reminded them of the tools they learned to use at home.
Working under the mentorship of Marshall Professors Jonathan Cox and Matthew Smith, they found their true calling in sculpture. In 2021, they graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Marshall.
After graduating, Peyote completed an apprenticeship in natural woodcarving at Blenko Glass Company. They took woodturning classes and are now a member of the American Association of Woodturners. They took classes at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in 2022, as a work-study student and were selected, by invitation, to be a Pentaculum resident.
Struggling with family issues, Peyote found art to be a stable foundation when everything else in their life was rocky. It gave them an outlet to creatively express their feelings about diversity, inclusion, environment and other social issues.
“From an early age, I had a natural curiosity to be more connected to earth’s materials,” they said. They produced conceptual, multi-layered work relying on mixed media such as wood, clay, found objects and recycled materials.
“I listen to the way materials speak to me and woodworking has become my favorite primary foundation because I find the warmth and folk-like spirit of wood to be especially invigorating,” they said. “My senses gravitate toward the essence of wood and the unique complexities of each type of grain and the distinctive fragrances of woods when they are burnt, cut or carved.”
Peyote’s sculptures have been featured throughout Appalachia. They have two permanent installations on display at Marshall University which celebrate diversity, equity and inclusion; one is in the Memorial Student Center and the other in the Drinko Library. Their work has been exhibited in the 2023 Telling Tales: Wharton Esherick Museum’s 29th Annual Woodworking Exhibition, 2022 Dairy Barn’s OH + 5, Contemporary Art of Our Region, and 2021 Tamarack 13th Annual Best of West Virginia Exhibition.
Dolin is as fascinated with history and preservation as they are with contemporary themes. Upon learning about the life and story of Huntington’s Memphis Tennessee Garrison, they did more research and featured Garrison’s life and work in their capstone project, Recollections of the Life and Home of Memphis Tennessee Garrison.
“I want my art to elevate the voices of the neglected, those people who are unseen and unheard, so that I can address social issues and give back to those who were neglected or are neglected,” they said.
One of their current projects is hosting a Palestinian workshop in which participants will use linocuts to signs, t-shirts or other objects message board with the linocut message “Free Palestine”. The money raised by the workshop will go toward funding evacuations for Palestinian families. Their artwork was featured in the 2024 Charleston PRIDE Parade exhibits.
They do some vending in Huntington’s Old Central City and are hoping to soon find space for a cooperative art space to share with other regional artists.
“I am excited about the Creative Entrepreneur Fellowship because I believe it can help me see beyond my art,” Peyote said. “My educational and art experiences have helped me learn what makes me tick, what gets me excited to play in the studio and what I care to make my art about. What I lack is continued mentoring, consulting and branding. I need the continuing one-on-one education to help me with my personal growth and understanding of regular, accountable progress to help me with my goals.”
Through the program, Peyote had their first meeting with a financial advisor. “What an eye-opener!” they said. “I never thought about keeping books or tracking what I spend on my art supplies, travel and other spending. I always just thought of those expenses as the cost of doing something I love, not as business costs. Now, I am beginning to look at budgets and planning.”
All of this, plus the program’s courses in communications, marketing and social media will help Peyote as they start planning for the future.
“In five years, I hope to have completed my master’s degree and be selling my work in Appalachia and beyond,” they said. “I want to have a practical art space and a community and have completed solo exhibitions in some of the galleries I admire. I need to have the tools and the space for this to happen and what I am learning in the fellowship program gives me the tools for long-range planning, short-term decisions and success.”
“My life has been one of challenges and changes,” they said. “There is much that we don’t have control over, but every day we have a choice to wake up and leave things – and people – better than you found them. For me, art is the choice for change.”
Kristen Colebank
“Art is magical…It’s a hidden superpower, a way to express oneself visually that transcends many potential language, societal, and cultural barriers.”
Kristen Colebank is a multimedia representational painter with a specialty in watercolor. While her full-time career in the arts is a fairly recent development, her passion for art goes back to childhood.
“I was one of those kids who loved the illustrations in books as much as the words. I was always doodling and drawing pictures from magazines,” Kristen said.
A native West Virginian, Colebank calls herself a home-grown artist. She credits fellow West Virginia artist Lotus MacDowell as an early influence, along with the late George Harper.
“Harper painted small-town scenes, and it was through his work I began to see how abstract, geometric patterns can be found in the environments that surround us,” she said. “I’ve never had many opportunities to travel to museums in nearby cities, especially when I was younger, so I was more focused on the work of regional artists.”
Kristen’s relationship to art has transformed over the years, from part-time artist to full-time career. With degrees in English and IT, she spent many years as an editor, graphic designer, and later, as a technology specialist and instructional designer. She painted throughout life’s big changes, but it was only after working a nightshift job in the mid-2000s she was able to begin imagining a career in the arts.
“That job provided me with daylight hours to start painting regularly again,” she said. “Around that same time, I became involved with a local artists’ co-op for a few years, and that experience began to show me that my work was sellable, even if only on a very small scale.”
As a representational artist, painting scenes from small towns and rural spaces, Kristen’s body of work explores the concept of edges and boundaries, which can be hard to recognize as they are
constantly redefined.
“Art reflects life; we often want everything to be clearly defined and simple, but the reality is that things are more complicated,” Kristen said.
Watercolor lends itself to her subject matter because of its fluidity. The yin and yang of its rigid practice versus the free-flowing nature of the medium itself reflects the similar nuance of boundaries in Kristen’s compositions. Juxtaposing hard and soft edges, she creates a rich experience for the viewer. While she acknowledges the rigid discipline and management of the medium are what initially attracted her to it, she has come to appreciate watercolor’s happy accidents. “It is those accidents that create amazing passages; the glowing transparency, and soft fluidity that watercolor can achieve.”
Trying new things is one way Kristen continues improving as a painter. Her introduction to the “en plein air” method created a turning point in her development as an artist.
“Working from life, “in the open air,” as en plein air is loosely translated, allows me to place the proper emphasis on my work, rather than constantly evaluating my work’s shortcomings against a photograph. It forces me to narrow my focus and articulate what I’m trying to accomplish. I have to work fast and be quick with my decisions, which helps energize the work,” she said.
Alternative mediums such as oil paints and relief printing have also created valuable challenges for Kristen. The different possibilities these mediums offer is one point of attraction, while she also acknowledges that they affect how she practices watercolor.
“I enjoy the starkness, simplification, and whimsy of relief printing. It’s also very viscerally satisfying to carve into a block or feel the tack of the ink as you’re rolling it out,” she says. “I started exploring oil painting because I noticed there were pieces I wanted to create that were better suited to the buttery texture, the opacity, and the freedom to make a mark and then smear it into another, that oil provides. Oil has stretched and humbled me, and that’s been good for my watercolor practice.”
Painting with gouache allows her to blend the attributes of multiple styles, offering a result that is both hybrid and unique. She gets both the opacity that oil offers and the fluidity of watercolor, which she uses to play with layers of sharper edges.
Over the years, Kristen has had various opportunities to show her work in the state and regionally. In 2013, she was honored with a Merit Award at the West Virginia Juried Exhibition for her painting “Mumbles and Speaks,” an experience she found both surprising and validating. A major milestone for Kristen was her first solo show in 2014, where she displayed her series “Extraordinary | Everyday”, a body of work based on Wardensville, a town she has called home for more than 25 years.
“Seeing those pieces on the wall together felt amazing, and I had a great group of family and supporters who braved heavy rain and a 4th of July parade to come to the venue for the opening,” she says. “At the time, I didn’t know if the series would resonate. Ultimately, I realized those dusty corners exist in nearly all towns, and I was able to present the subject matter so that it stirs memory in a wide range of people.”
As an artist who is also a teacher, Kristen believes that passing on knowledge to developing artists is vitally important, a lesson she got from her own art instructors. Teaching has been a rewarding experience for her, helping people make connections through art when they need it most. Looking forward, she wants to develop her skills in oil so she can start to offer this style along with her watercolor paintings. She also wants to create a mentorship model to help emerging artists develop their skills. In the more immediate future, a step Kristen hopes to take for her business is to step outside her comfort zone as she learns to network and gain exposure.
“I’ve always hidden behind my art, where now I need to hold myself up, along with what I make,” she said. “I hope that I’ll be able to make connections now with venues and organizations that would have been difficult to manage previously, so I’ll have more opportunities to teach and potentially sell work.”
Submitted sponsored content provided by the Tamarack Foundation for the Arts » Written by Caryn Gresham » All photo and video courtesy of Braiden Maddox
