Andrea Newell Greenfield: Tacoma Watercolorist
- By Kelli Jo Hjalseth
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- 01 Oct, 2018
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Tacoma has a rich, scrappy history of fostering artists. Our mixture of urban and natural landscapes has given inspiration to a wide variety of artists, with many using the Pacific Northwest's vibrant ecological beauty as their muse. While many people may be familiar with your standard landscapes found in thrift stores, or safely decorative depictions of the wildlife's grandeur – in the work of Bob Ross, for instance – other artists show that there's plenty of room to display personal quirks and even a bright sense of humor in painting the great outdoors.
We recently came across the work of Andrea Newell Greenfield and had to share. She has a eye for making art playful and imaginative art inspired by flora and fauna around the Pacific NW. Greenfield's work can most readily be found at the Proctor Art Gallery, which has been a Proctor District cultural hub since 2009. Rather than focusing on the biological realism or traditional landscape technique, Greenfield approaches nature with a style more akin to what you might find in a children's book illustration.
“It is so easy to go out my door and just see what is happening in the garden for ideas and subject matter,” says Greenfield. I tend to like to focus on smaller parts rather than the whole vista, i.e. a few flowers rather than the whole flower garden. Birds are a favorite subject as there is so much variety and possibilities there. I don't know that I'm always conscious of balancing the playful with the beautiful but I hope my work conveys some of what caught my interest enough to want to paint it. That could be the form and color of a flower or the personality of a bird. Sometimes my work might seem to have a story to it which I think reflects my life long love of children's stories and illustration.”
Working with watercolors, Greenfield is not only fascinated with nature, but with the moments where natural and urban life connect – a tree lit by moonlight in a park, critters crawling across brick walls, spooky jack-o-lanterns, and the like. Her work depicts any number of sights you're likely to see on any given stroll through our beautiful city, and there's an appealing shagginess to her paintings that eschews pretension in favor of lively personality.
“I have been making art since I was a child,” says Greenfield. “My notebooks in school were full of doodles and drawings. I think watercolor became interesting to me because my grandmother was a watercolor artist and I grew up in a house full of watercolor paintings everywhere. It remains interesting to me as there is still so much more I can learn and do with it as a medium.”
Greenfield's history in Tacoma began with her moving to town to attend UPS. She eventually got her BA in Art in 1983, and had the good fortune of meeting the man who would eventually become her husband while at school. After some time away after graduation, Greenfield and her husband moved back to Tacoma to start a family. Greenfield took some time away from making art while her kids were little, but started painting again about 12 years ago, joining a co-op gallery in Freighthouse Square, then making the move to the Proctor Art Gallery.
