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Playing with painting
When it comes to watercolor, it's hard to paint the line between good and bad art.
On the most basic level, watercolor is applied to wet paper in order for the pigment to fill the entire surface.
Timing is everything. Unlike other mediums, the lighter colors must be applied first and the darker pigments follow.
Janet Brome has mastered blurry boundaries.
Tucked away in the back of an otherwise tidy house, Brome's art studio resembles something of a child's play room.
Thirty years ago, Brome and her husband, Chuck, converted the early 20th century schoolhouse into their home.
Some clues still remain; a wood burning furnace heats the room, chalkboards stand as message boards and old school lockers pose as kitchen cabinetry.
Brome's experiences with watercolor are playful creations.
"I'm not very careful," she says, "I measure ten times and cut once."
Flipping through frames holding her work, she pulls a three-dimensional green and blue lizard that could be mistaken for a science experiment.
Brome always asks herself the same questions before she starts; "What is the essence? The appeal? How can I make it more abstract?"
If you didn't have it before, patience comes when working with watercolor.
Without a doubt, Brome believes watercolor is the hardest medium she's worked with.
Most of the time, artists can easily fix their mistakes by piling on more paint. Watercolor is not so forgiving.
"If you don't do it right the first time," she said, "You've lost it."
Due to its transparency, it demands that the first time be the right time.
"It's a dance through two ways, the right and left brain," she said.
The left side of the brain exercises creativity and the right side controls organization.
Art, according to Brome, requires use of both.
When first beginning, it's particularly hard to relinquish control over the end result during the planning stages.
"You don't have to know the end result (before starting)," she said.
Color choices must be pre-planned with no time wasted between applications. If the initial color dries before the next is applied, the effect is lost.
This could be why she has recently switched to screen sculptures. In fact, three molded screens in red, orange and blue hang from a laundry line in her art studio.
Pulling cords, much like you would do to open and close window blinds, the screens instead move laterally, creating different scenes on the white wall behind it.
What is it?
"Anything you think," she replied.
Watercolors is in stiff competition with oil paintings.
Oil paintings sell more frequently because people feel like they're buying 'art,' she said, with her fingers curled into quotation marks.
What is art?
"What do I know? I know what works for me, but for you?'' she shrugs and looks away.
Brome believes in the old adage that there is no bad art, just no art.
However, considering her many years of judging art in the classroom and deciding who makes the grade, she's grounded enough to realize that not everyone is an artist.
Some people just don't get it.
Brome asks the question; why does art have to be or not be, so to speak.
"People have opinions on whether or not the like music, but not whether or not something a musician creates is music," she said.
Not in the art world. "With music," she says, "You never ask, what is it?"
When asked what advice she'd give up-and-coming artists, she paused for a moment.
"Push, explore - I think an artists need to not be afraid to take risks."
She calls the process of making art "Zennish" and "meditative."
She wants her students to move toward painting the spirit rather than the sole physicality of their subject.
Once tuned into the spirit of the subject, the question then turns to aesthetics.
"Does it mean red? Does it mean a big brush? What does it all add up to," she asked.
Brome has shown her work in galleries in Little Washington, VA, Maryland, Nebraska, but mainly at the Middle Street Gallery in Washington.
The most common question she gets when showing her work: "How did you do that?"
Brome again returns to her mantra: "I just play."
Finding inspiration from landscapes and animals, she takes the literal and moves forward.
"Something will grab me and I'll have to paint it and push it further." Brome said. "I need the sifting and distilling of reality."
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