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My fascination with moving water took hold when I attended my first Sweet Adelines (women’s barbershop singing) competition in Spokane, Washington in 2008. By then my husband and I had moved from Alaska to western Washington, and the opportunity to travel to Spokane with my chorus allowed me to see the mighty Spokane River in action. 

We moved to the Idaho panhandle in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, but our move allows me to live near the river and observe even more of its beauty.

The Spokane River runs about 111 miles from the northern part of Lake Coeur d'Alene in the Idaho Panhandle emptying into the Columbia River at Franklin D. Roosevelt Lake in eastern Washington, taking on various personalities on its route. Where we live outside Coeur d' Alene, we see the power in the spring as water flows from the North Channel Dam in Post Falls to serene passages to swirling eddies around rocky shorelines.

The description for my watercolor painting, “Life is a River” came when the local Jacklin Center for the Arts announced a call for entries to an exhibition entitled “Art Overcomes” and I needed a statement to accompany my proposed entry. The spirit of the theme was to encourage art that described how various mediums helped us as artists to “celebrate healing, comfort, recovery & joy.”

My thoughts were that life is, indeed, a river. From reference photos I took of the Spokane River at the local Corbin Park and reflecting back on my own experiences with cancer and pre-cancer surgeries, I'm constantly reminded that we have riffles and rocks, shorelines for refuge, smooth water for easy passage, and everything in between as we travel our own rivers. As the painting progressed, all of the elements I considered made themselves known. 

As a watercolor artist, painting moving water means pulling out all the stops when it comes to technique. There are areas of wet-in-wet, graded washes and dry brush, glazing over dry areas, all the while paying close attention to values. I’ve done several paintings of the Spokane River in various locations, with more to come, keeping sketches and notes in my River Journal.