There are paintings that describe the world, and there are paintings that make you feel it. The best watercolors — the ones that stop you in your tracks, that you find yourself returning to — belong firmly in the second category. The winners of the 2026 Northwest Watercolor Society’s Annual Waterworks Online Membership Exhibition are a masterclass in the difference.
Juror Michael Solovyev, speaking from Belgium at the artists’ awards reception earlier this month, made that distinction the centerpiece of his selections. Choosing 75 paintings for the exhibition and 16 for special recognition, he kept returning to the same question: Is there a feeling inside this painting that makes it unique? “It’s not just an apple or just a street,” he said. “There’s a feeling about the apple and the street that touches and feeds the soul — that makes it art.”
That standard was on full display in the top winners. First place went to Caitlin Leline-Hatch for Of Earth and Wind — a work Solovyev described as among the most technically demanding a watercolorist can attempt. Painting three-dimensionally in a single layer, he noted, is the domain of master painters, and the texture, color, and composition he found here he called simply “amazing and gorgeous.”
Second place went to Stella Xiaohuan Dai for Bond Lake II, a painting that moved Solovyev almost to envy. “I can feel the temperature of the air,” he said. “Small strokes in the right place with the right color.” It is the kind of painting that reminds us what watercolor, at its best, can do that no other medium quite manages — conjure atmosphere from almost nothing, make air visible, let silence speak.
Suze Woolf took third place for Punchbowl Flagpole, a work of such patient, precise observation that Solovyev admitted he wouldn’t have the passion to paint it himself. “I would put it on my wall,” he said — perhaps the most honest compliment a juror can give.
The new Liz & Jesse Walker Award went to Luigi Gamez for Retrato de Historia, which Solovyev praised for its lively character and masterful dry brush work. “Absolutely, truly watercolor,” he said — a phrase that captures something essential about what the medium rewards: confidence, spontaneity, and a willingness to let the paint do what only paint can do.
What unites these four paintings — and the 75 works selected for the exhibition — is not technical virtuosity alone, though there is plenty of that. It is the quality Solovyev kept returning to: the presence of a feeling that is specific, personal, and alive. That is what watercolor, in the right hands, makes possible.
The full exhibition is free to view through June 13, 2026, at nwws.org/annual-waterworks-exhibition, along with a recorded hour of Solovyev introducing all 75 accepted paintings and sharing his thinking. For anyone who loves the medium — or wants to understand it better — it is well worth your time.
Call for Entries: Inspired? There’s no better time to enter your work in a competition that rewards exactly the quality Solovyev was describing — painting that goes beyond the subject and touches the soul. The Salon Art Prize offers $65,000 in annual cash prizes across 19 categories, with Grand Prize winners earning their artwork on the cover of PleinAir or Fine Art Connoisseurmagazine. Enter at TheSalonArtPrize.com.
