The next Society of Watercolor Artists (SWA) member meeting is Monday, March 18th at 7pm. Meeting Location: University of North Texas – Health Science Center, 3500 Camp Bowie Blvd., Fort Worth, TX. Visitors are welcome.
For more about SWA, see the website https://www.swawatercolor.com.
March Demo Artist is Randy Meadow.
Texas western artist Randy Meador says he owes his art career to former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. “While reading a Churchill biography in 1991, I stopped and meditated on his words, ‘When I paint, nothing else exists.’ I wanted desperately to go there… regularly.” The former marketer and speaker began painting that day.
Meador graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 1985 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, but initially chose a different career course in a variety of businesses.
“I pestered Buck Taylor (watercolor artist) at a Fort Worth Stock Show in 1992 and asked him who were the best watercolor artists, then proceeded to study all the works of Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Paul Cezanne, and others. They were my early teachers. I figured, ‘why not learn from some of the greats?’ Afterward, I just taught myself by making notes of everything that did and did not work. In the beginning, I think I owned every watercolor technique book ever written, and later it was humbling to find myself competing with many of those authors in juried exhibitions.”
When asked about inspiration for his subjects and technique, he draws what appears to be a sincere blank. “I’m really not sure I know what that means. I simply look for something that interests me and try really hard to render not what I see, but what I wished I could see…what I want it to look like… hopefully without screwing it up.”
