Patricia Tobacco Forrester

Copake, 2006, Watercolor; 40 x 60 inches

Ausable, 1999, Watercolor; 40 x 60 inches

Patricia Tobacco Forrester was a watercolor artist that worked en plein air. Sadly, Forrester passed away in 2011 at the age of 71. Before her death she was a Guggenheim Fellow; and has work shown in Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Art Institute of Chicago, and the British Museum.

She worked directly from life. The landscapes were not planned or drawn out before hand. Forrester spent seven hour stretches a day painting outside. She did not replicate the scene, but infused memories with what was before her. The main inspiration for her paintings were things that grow. 

My favorite element of Forrester’s paintings is the sense of movement she creates. The movement was created by how fast she painted en plein air. She also did not use the exact colors you would find in nature. Her paintings are bright and exciting. I would like to follow her example and not be so literal about my color choices. There is an interesting mix between the realistic and the abstract of her landscapes. The paintings are somewhere in between the two. Perhaps, they are a little Impressionistic. She let light and the environment direct her to what to paint. She might start with one thing as the focus and find that by the end another element has taken over and become the focus of the landscape.