Judy Lavoie

  Continuing my current MO of experimenting with new art materials and methods in my paintings, I’ve completed another scratchboard, this time with a new set of watercolors. I’ve Got Sunshine is my first painting with QoR® (pronounced ‘core’) watercolors from Golden Artist Colors (read more about the paints at the end of this post). As with my painting “Jasper,” I’ve painted this on Aquabord®, a white-surfaced scratchboard panel. When seed drops from our bird feeders into the gravel below the … Read More

My new 2019 calendar is printed and here’s a sneak preview. With one exception, the paintings I’ve chosen were created within the past year (not counting an inset of artwork I did at age 7). That’s more painting than I’ve done in recent history, hoorah! Most of my newest paintings have been horizontal so they fit my calendar format perfectly. For the past few years  my calendars have found a great following, so now I have a challenge to fill … Read More

My art has been chosen for the juried Oak Ridge* Art Center 5th Annual Open Show 2018. “Sunny Side Up” was selected for this exhibition of all types of art media, with no geographical limitations for artists submitting entries. Juror Richard Mills, an accomplished artist and Professor Emeritus of Fine Arts at Auburn University in Alabama, was asked to select 90 works for the show. He found incredibly high quality submitted this year, and when he had narrowed the choices … Read More

Cows have been very very good to me – the ones I’ve painted anyway. When I initially got notice of my painting Eat Chicken being considered to hang in a children’s hospital, it was the first time I ever thought about kids as an audience for my art. I had been toying with the idea of doing another cow painting, and the old nursery rhyme “Little Boy Blue” inspired the idea for my newest work, “Cow’s In The Corn.” So … Read More

I am pleased and proud to announce that my award-winning watercolor “Eat Chicken” is being purchased for Chattanooga’s Erlanger Children’s Hospital Outpatient Center. It will be part of the hospital’s award-winning permanent art display, with other fine paintings. The Arts at Erlanger program has received national recognition, and is an important component of the new Children’s Hospital’s innovative family-friendly environment, designed to engage children, distract them from their illnesses and meet the complex needs of families and physicians. I can’t … Read More

I feel like I’ve been a bit spastic with my art recently – jumping from watercolor to acrylics, working on paper, canvas, and panels. Whatever I am working on at the time is my favorite. There are so many different art materials and methods I want to try, and it’s a continuous learning process. Perhaps someday I’ll settle down and concentrate on one medium and one surface; I’m still figuring out what kind of artist I want to be when … Read More

For my newest painting I had two goals in mind: (1) to use acrylic paints in a highly transparent way, and (2) to use an odd shaped canvas I’ve had among my art supplies for too long. The canvas is three feet wide and a little over a foot tall, so I decided to use it horizontally and create a painting of a big backlit red poppy from my garden. To begin, I reviewed many poppy reference photos in my … Read More

  When I opened a new package of three little Aquabord™ panels, I thought I was trying a new painting surface… a thin layer of fine white kaolin clay on a hardboard with a pebbly texture, heralded as ideal for use with watercolors. The surface absorbs watercolor pigment similarly to cold-pressed (textured) watercolor paper, but the paint can be easily removed. It’s sometimes known as scratchboard, and when I was a kid we created our own by covering heavy paper … Read More

A fabulous story about the 2018 Tennessee Watercolor Society Exhibition has just been published in Nashville Arts Magazine. The author quoted curator Terri Jordan of The Customs House Museum in Clarksville TN (about an hour from Nashville), the host site for the Exhibition. Her words about my painting Eat Chicken are so complimentary! Also in the article are lots of comments – specifically about my painting – from the show juror Lian Quan Zhen. I’m so delighted with what was … Read More

This dog portrait is unlike my usual “head-shot.” My friend Jenny messaged me with a photo, sadly saying her daughter-in-law Lindsey’s dog Bree had just died at age 15. She asked if I could do a painting from the photo, as a surprise for Lindsey. I was grateful for the opportunity and eager to tackle the interesting pose. Unfortunately, the backlighting which helped to capture a dramatic pose simultaneously knocked out the details in the shadows. The photo was small … Read More