A Saturday watercolor workshop will mark Wyatt Waters’ third visit to McComb to help local painters learn how to see.
“What I teach is mostly about seeing color,” Waters said Wednesday. “Sometimes people advanced in pushing paint around still haven’t learned how to see.”
He was last here for a painting demonstration in 2009.
“McComb has a long history of the arts,” The Clinton-based painter noted.
Waters’ work has been shown in The Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson, the Meridian Museum of Art and the Jackson Municipal Gallery. He operates his own eponymous gallery in Clinton.
He has also collaborated with noted Mississippi chef Robert St. John on three cookbooks, two about Southern food and one about Italian cuisine. St. John’s recipes are enhanced by Waters’ paintings of kitchen still lifes, roadside scenes and panoramic landscapes.
Waters uses a culinary metaphor to describe working with watercolor.
“It’s good to leave it a little undercooked,” he explained. Color shifts a bit as the paint dries, a condition the artist must anticipate when applying brush to paper.
His workshops, which he gives occasionally all over the state, are open to painters at every skill level.
He noted that “beginners frequently do as well as advanced painters.”
Asked if his students sometimes want only to learn how to paint like he does, he said that does happen, but “I try to encourage them to see for themselves. I’m not interested in creating more little me’s.”
“One of me is more than enough,” he said with a chuckle.
Linda Wallace of the Southwest Mississippi Art Guild organized Waters’ upcoming workshop. She said his two previous demonstrations have been indoors, but the Saturday class will take place outdoors.
Painters will gather at the Depot in downtown McComb. From there, they will find their own places to set up, whether in sun or shade, and using buildings, greenery or other subjects for inspiration.
Waters specializes in painting outdoors, a technique known by the French term “plein air,” meaning “open air.”
He characterizes painting as “a solitary pursuit” but says the workshops are “kind of a support group for painters,” where they can share ideas and learn from each other.
And the teacher also learns.
Wyatt compares the artistic process to peeling an onion, where layer after layer is removed to reach an essential core.
Very often in one of his workshops, “somebody will help peel my own onion.”
“It’s going to be a very pleasurable experience with Wyatt teaching,” Wallace said. “He is an excellent instructor.”
Wyatt Waters’ Saturday workshop is 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the McComb Depot. The fee is $80 for members of the Southwest Mississippi Art Guild and $100 for non-members. Limited space is still available.
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For information and reservations, call Linda Wallace at 601-395-3932.
