Joe Jackson's retailer Shoes

Watercolor has a mind of its own. You put paint to paper with a thought in mind and the colors laugh and go their own way. If you are accomplished enough, the result is pleasing to your plan but, here and there, the marriage of paint and water leaves subtle surprises. I came back to watercolor in midlife, at a time when you have enough knowledge to know that nothing can be totally planned. The needed supplies are easily carried if you travel and, while your wife peruses a shop or two for treasures, you are able to produce little, color splashed visual notes of a point in time. When I work with wood I offer a prayer to St. Joseph and his son, the carpenters, for guidance. When I apply my brush to a button of watercolor I ask the same of retailer Winslow Homer.