The Watercolour Story - by Jeanette
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Over 30 years ago, the first of my eight
grandchildren was born. I looked at her tiny nursery
room. It was devoid of decoration. Thus, the first
hippo on a bicycle was born. Watercolour was not
my medium, and I painted this on bad paper with very
cheap watercolour paints, and it wasn't great. However, it was sufficiently good for a friend of my daughter-in-law, to ask her if I did Peacocks. So, I did a magnificent male peacock in full feather, towering over a very submissive pen hen. The neighbour loved it. For the first 10 or so, it was very easy to give them away. By now I had upgraded fractionally on materials, and the paintings were getting slightly better. I began to see people as animals, found the whole thing amusing, and didn't consider that this was "art" in any form. My first mistake, about 30 paintings along, was trying to make each of them amusing. I tried to tell the people who had inspired the picture that it was them. Strangely however, it seemed nobody wanted to be a frog, or a hippo, and I actually lost a goodish friend over this. I tended to favour fat animals, as I don't draw well. It was all still "joke art", but I was now selling them rather than gifting them. The ideas were flowing fast. I also took ideas from everywhere, and where I have copied a character without recognition to the original, I heartily apologize. My original hippo could do anything with small transformations - play all the sports, dance in a tutu, water ski etc. The more ridiculous, the funnier (to me at any rate). I lucked into the baptism market in my local area in Spain, and grandparents bought a painting as a gift that would last for their new baby in their family. The elder siblings then also wanted a painting. I had my first mass sale to a hospital for its paediatric department, followed by their restaurant, and the physiotherapy department. I painted these specially, and the feedback was enormous. It was like having a gallery dedicated to my work. My daughter in America, then started marketing the watercolours there. The ideas kept flowing, and my mind gravitated to amuse adults, but the children's paintings were still my forte. Some of them were awful. In America, the Hippocrates Health Institute decorated their entire range of buildings with my paintings, and their clients bought paintings. What I didn't like was that I was repeating "best sellers" up to 13 times, and what I really thought of as my "art" was totally on the back burner, as I was churning out the water colours. By now, I was using good quality paint, wonderfully absorbent paper, and exhibiting at galleries, who all seemed to want the watercolours. My last exhibition was at The Cloisters in Mallorca, where at a concert on the opening night, where the animal charity involved received a third of the profits, I exhibited 60 watercolours and sold 45 on the opening night, at full price. This certainly told me to link myself to a charity. I also did not like the horribly commercial side that had taken over my love of painting. Every brightness must have a dark side. This came out by the animals being bad tempered and nasty. Crocodiles appeared. They terrify me. Anyhow, that's the bare bones of the history of my watercolours. My husband took ill, and died in 2008. I was exhibition ready at the time for the gallery that represented me in Mallorca. That exhibition (I had had several) never took place, and these last watercolours have been sitting in storage in a dungeon for about 16 years. This is a record of the last of the watercolours, rescued from their dark tomb and photographed by my son and grandson. I have recorded 1,700 sales in my active years of churning out these odd paintings, starting with wanting to cheer up the nurseries of my own eight beloved grandchildren. I hope they make you smile. Jeanette Finn  |