For watercolor artist Ann Pember, light isn’t just an element of a painting — it’s the engine that drives the entire composition. Flowers may be her subject, but it’s the light on and through those petals that tells her when a painting is possible.
“I look for an interesting light pattern and grouping of shapes,” she explains. “If there is no light on a flower, I wait to take photos until there is. This is essential to what I want to paint.”
Rather than relying on Photoshop to manufacture drama, she prefers to experience it firsthand. Light reveals the transitions she cares most about — the hard and soft edges, the interplay between intense and neutral color, the way details dissolve into glow. That shift away from crisp, early photorealism has allowed her to embrace a more expressive, shape-driven approach.
Her favorite moments happen when flowers are backlit, a condition she calls “magical” for the way it merges many small shapes into a larger, luminous form. It’s one of the reasons she gravitates toward close-focus compositions. “I rarely paint a traditional bouquet in a vase,” she says. “I want the design to move off the paper so the subject feels grounded, not floating.”
Whether she’s painting a bloom or a landscape, her attention remains the same: intimate, intentional, and rooted in the quiet drama created when light transforms the ordinary into something extraordinary.
See how Ann paints firsthand by checking out her two watercolor workshops on video, Vibrant Orchid: Painting in the Flow of Watercolor, and Painting in the Flow of Watercolor on High Plate Illustration Board.
