Breakfast at Carolyn's

August Breakfast/Maine by watercolorist Carolyn Brady evokes a delicious summer morning.

Carolyn Brady is one of a handful of artists whose work has elevated watercolor painting to the stature traditionally reserved for oil painting. The descriptive accuracy and virtuosity of her painting technique ally her with a group of artists known as Photorealists.

Like the Photorealists, Brady works from camera-generated images. Brady projects her image on a large sheet of paper and makes a faint, quick pencil sketch of it. She then paints the composition, continually referring to a large color print and incorporating the distortions and illusionism introduced by the camera lens into her final work.

In August Breakfast/Maine, for example, the clear focus of the foreground contrasts dramatically with the soft focus of the background, with relatively little transition in the middle ground. As a result, the composition appears mysteriously fragmented and unreal, introducing an element of tension that challenges the apparent realism of her work.

Source: Joann Moser. Recent Acquisition Gallery Installation (exhibition text, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1997).

Pictured: Carolyn Brady, August Breakfast/Maine, 1997, watercolor, 28 x 37 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Nancy Hoffman, RebeccaHoffman-Greenwald, and Peter Greenwald.