Featured Artist for October 1999

Featured GiveAway by Tina Williams Coombe River Bridge 36" x 36" - 1999 Oil on Canvas Valued at $500

Karen Ratcliff Winthrop, Maine

Coombe River Bridge is the flagship piece of Tina Williams' Coombe Hills series of paintings covered in this feature. Coombe River Bridge beckons you to have a picnic by the water's edge.


MEET THE ARTIST

Featured Artist Tina Williams

Tina Williams was born in August 1962, in a rural community on the outskirts of Fresno, California. She grew up in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, about a half hour from the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Her family owned a small farm spanning twenty acres of orange and other citrus trees. The foothills were her playground.

As a child, Tina's mother had a notable influence on her early artistic endeavors. One of her earliest memories was following her mother through the countryside as she painted landscapes. Tina was quite young and not yet in the position to attend formal school, so her mother offered her a canvas and brush in the name of education. Her parents met at an art class in college in the 1950s. Today her mother is working on her second master's degree in fine arts and is an art instructor at Fresno State University.

While Tina worked in theater and choir in school, she tapped into her art-making side just about 4 years ago, after using part of her Christmas bonus to purchase canvas and paint. She tried acrylics but was frustrated with the texture so switched to oil paints and now uses stretched canvas. Tina is basically self-taught and started by copying such masters as Van Gogh and Monet. Later she saw paintings by Thomas Kinkade and became interested in more traditional landscape aesthetics and English country scenes, cottages and the like, and looked to reflect the charm and magic of those scenes. She's been to England numerous times since she married an Englishman in 1983, and tries to capture the magical quality of the quaint landscapes and beauty of the countryside. She took art classes in high school, and then basic drawing and watercolor classes at Pasadena City College. She sketches before beginning a painting and has discovered this saves her a lot of time. She treats it all as part of the learning process while her Coombe Hills paintings represented in this feature signify a broader passage of recollection.

Rambler's Rest, 1999 Oil on Canvas, 36" x 36" $400

Everything from rainy days to cloud formations to beauty in nature inspires her. Even while driving to work, she finds beauty in the landscapes along the freeway and tries to remember them for future paintings. She loves her husband, good music from classical to classic rock, cooking, England, captivating scenery, good literature, European history, true friendship, animals and children. She abhors pettiness, anger, politics in the office--the usual stuff that makes people forget to be kind to each other. She believes such tribulations tend to drain people's energy.

Her work never really turns out exactly how she plans it. She just starts working and her painting emerges through instinct. She tries to remember parts of scenes and the way light played on a shrub or a beautiful cloud formation. She feels inspired to go home and put her memories to canvas. Tina loves the rolling hills in California, especially the stretch from Santa Barbara to San Luis Obispo, and enjoys watching the seasons change from brown in the winter to the bright green of spring and fading to yellow-brown in the summer. She's inspired by the way the sun illuminates the hills during the different seasons, shaping different shadows. She even enjoys the solitude of dark mountains at night. Basically she is possessed of an earnest appreciation of nature and the inspiration it bestows on her.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Tina is a morning person feeling most energetic from around 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. Unfortunately, that is usually when she's either preparing for work or at work. However, if she feels really inspired and motivated, she will paint before work and occasionally in the evenings. Her best painting is usually done on the weekends or the occasional holiday.

Tina works as a personal assistant to a high-net-worth family, taking care of various administrative duties such as settling the accounts for their homes, acting as a liaison with the household staffs, overseeing insurance coverage, chartering the yacht, and a million other details. During the last few years she's been taking vacation time here and there, a day at a time, so that she can devote more time to her painting. Of course, she would love nothing more than to be able to paint full-time. Her idea of pure bliss would be to paint for a living, and to live in an old two-story house filled with children and dogs, with a large garden.

The Lavenders, 1999 Oil on Canvas, 36" x 36" $400

Tina loves to travel and cook and has had some of her recipes published in Sunset Magazine. She also enjoys literature, history, music, gardening, and long walks with her husband. She feels quite blessed to be married to her favorite person and they've been companions for almost 18 years and married for 16. She feels it makes a real difference in life to have your best friend as your constant companion. She is grounded spiritually and always searching for meaning in life and doesn't believe in random, tragic events. Everything is for a reason. She feels that the ultimate law is that you get what you put into the universe. If you treat people badly, then bad things will happen. If you are good, then good will come back to you.

Bluebell Walk, 1999 Oil on Canvas, 36" x 36" $500

Her goals as an artist are to "improve, improve, improve." She is never satisfied with her work, loving each piece but with each piece she knows down deep she could have captured it better. Each time she starts a new canvas she says to herself, "now this one will be really good." Then she simply tries to live up to her goal. She never thinks of the "art world." She only wants to paint what comes from inside and hopes that others like what she paints.

Croham Rise, 1999 Oil on Canvas, 36" x 36" $500

THE COOMBE HILL SERIES

This feature's series was produced from a trip to England with her husband, Paul. She believes "There's nothing quite like the English countryside--and certainly nothing resembling it in California." And the pure aesthetic charm she's seen along the quiet country lanes continues to inspire the bulk of her artistry. The Coombe Hills Series further explores the ambiance and scenery first portrayed by Coombe Hill Woods--a painting which was easily the most admired of the thirty-two works on exhibit in her first show in downtown Los Angeles last fall.

So she begins by ambling into the countryside around Coombe Hill. She starts at her favorite scene of the set -- Coombe River Bridge, which is our Giveaway this month. We continue down the path in Tina's own words:

"Here is a solid old stone bridge offering a path across a quietly flowing river, a scene reminiscent of one of our favorite walks along the River Mole near Box Hill in southeast England. I try to draw the viewer into the scene, and invite you to take a picnic next to the floral profusion along the river bank. From there, we'll cross over the bridge and follow the path that leads to Croham Rise--a path that invites you to stray into the woods, to run on the grass, and to stop and pick the wildflowers. Over the crest and down the hill we go, detouring to take a closer look at the blue flowers in the distance. Bluebell Walk is exactly the sort of path Paul and I would love to spend a long day exploring. It takes you off the beaten path into the wilderness and beyond. As we round the once-distant bend along the base of the hill we come up on the main path once again entering a canopied area, curving gently alongside a swiftly flowing tributary of Coombe River. Brookside Way takes us right to the edge of the rushing water, then leads us away to discover some hidden nooks and crannies in other parts of the woods. That's when we happen upon Alice's Garden, a quaint little hideaway you'd hardly expect to find on this part of the walk, but that adds so much to the experience. Then we come upon the stepping stones through The Lavenders, and a hop and a skip later it's the welcome sight of Rambler's Rest. Here we'll pause, and allow the quietness and stillness of this place to prolong the moment. Then it's time to follow the path once again, as it leads us back to familiar ground. As we leave Coombe Hill Woods, through the original piece, I hope you have found the journey both peaceful and inspiring. I have enjoyed sharing it with you."

Contact the Artist

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ARTIST STATEMENT

I personally love to look at my work, and if other people love it too, that's all the more fulfilling. I am not trying to make any personal statement other than a love for the colors, and a feeling for each painting. I love painting clouds, and I never know which way a painting will go until I am well into it. I just simply go on feeling and let the brush take over. My favorite compliments from people are when they say they would like to be in one of the scenes I've painted. ~ Tina Williams