Jay Fields

Watercolors and Photography

I started throwing sketch pad, watercolors and brushes into a backpack in the mid-nineties with the idea of bringing home, as much as the sketch itself, some remembrance of what it felt like to be in a certain place at a certain time in a certain period of my life. (I still recall the feel of clear, crisp air on my hands and face sitting atop a glacier near Grindelwald, Switzerland, painting the valley below.)

I had no idea what I was doing but I loved the brief ecstatic times when color settled into place in some way I couldn’t have imagined. As I kept fooling with things, and took a watercolor course in Provence, I realized that I was drawn to the manner of the sketch, loosely inscribing painted subjects with ink and letting the energy of the scene jump to life according to what I saw and felt in the moment.

If another person looks at one of my sketches and feels even a smidge of that same energy, I feel blessed beyond words. The “little piece” becomes a gift, first given to the artist, then to another person who has discovered some sort of delight in a squiggle of the hand, a splat of color or the unexpected resonance of a memory.