Meet Jim Stovall, this week’s top American Watercolor Weekly Ambassador!
This painting, “Yearning to Breathe Free,” is a painting I did recently for Verse and Vision, a video series I am doing that shows me painting a watercolor. The voice-over for these videos is me reciting an appropriate poem. In this case, I am reciting two poems by Emma Lazarus, “1492” and “The New Colossus.”
A watercolorist directs an orchestra of pigments, paper, brushes, and tries to bring forth a coherent idea that will result in a painting with a clear sentiment or message. Getting all those elements to play in tune and at the same tempo is a matter of skill, experience, and luck. It doesn’t always happen, but when it does, the result can be magical and exhilarating.
My interests in watercolor painting range from landscapes and portraits to caricature and architecture. I enjoy the challenge of using watercolor to interpret what I see every day and what I have in my head.
I spent nearly 40 years teaching journalism and journalistic writing at the University of Alabama, Emory and Henry College, and the University of Tennessee. My wife Sally and I live on a small farm in East Tennessee where we enjoy gardening, walking, reading, beekeeping, writing — and, of course, painting.
I devote a good deal of time to various projects with the Blount County Public Library.
See me paint “Yearning to Breathe Free.”
Jim and I went to high school together many years ago and went our separate ways. But one day I saw a watercolor he had done and he saw one of mine on line and Shazam 50 plus years later here we are admiring each other’s watercolors. Tell me this medium is not magical.