‘Painting for me is very much like a puzzle,” Deb Horner said, describing her artistic process. “I love figuring out what colors work best, what brushes work best, what stage of the water works best.”
Horner’s watercolor paintings, depicting landscapes in Alaska and abroad, will be on display at Well Street Art Company throughout March. Many were done with a new direction she’s recently taken, applying watercolors to canvas rather than watercolor paper. Thus, she said, the title of her show, “Explorations: 57 N to 68 N,” contains two meanings.
“I would say that’s probably the context of my art practice. Explorations. Explorations in the natural world, my environment, seeing beautiful scenes, and recreating those scenes in watercolor. And while I’m still doing that, now it’s explorations using a different substrate, that being the canvas, and having to modify techniques.”
Horner said she decided to try painting with watercolors on canvas, still an unusual approach, for two reasons. First, the increasing cost of mats, frames and glass, and second, being intrigued by the results of other artists doing it and deciding to give it a try.
“It challenges me as an artist, to expand my horizons and do things in some ways quite a bit differently, and in other ways very much the same,” she explained. “You’re still using watercolor, but you’re painting on fabric. You’re not painting on paper. And the differences between the two are really interesting and really challenging.”
Unlike many artists, Horner didn’t seriously pursue art until after retirement, instead taking a long road to the easel, one involving a love for the outdoors dating back to early childhood.
Horner grew up in the Amish country of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and took full advantage of her surroundings. “I just loved being outside all the time,” she recalled. During summers, her father took the family up to the Adirondacks, and one year cajoled her into joining him on a climb up Blue Mountain. Upon reaching the top, she remembered, “that was it for me. I decided wilderness was my thing.”
During childhood, Horner played the cello, but as college neared, she decided a career in music wasn’t attainable. So she enrolled in the College of Wooster in Ohio as a literature major. While in school she spent a year in Ireland, where she met famed poet Seamus Heaney. “He was just the most delightful human being,” she said.
After graduating, Horner moved to the Adirondacks, first employed in county government, and then at two colleges where she worked in continuing education. This landed her a job at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1990 as director of Conferences and Institutes.
Upon reaching Alaska, Horner continued her outdoor ways, quickly diving into dog mushing. Not a competitive person, she shied away from long distance races. “I know myself well enough to know that I don’t deal well with sleep deprivation,” she said. She did get involved in one widely publicized journey across Alaska, however. “I ended up going with Norman Vaughn on his first commemorative Serum Run from Nenana to Nome, which was one of the best experiences of my life.”
As she approached retirement, Horner began thinking about dabbling in art. Her friend Jan Stitt, known for signing her paintings as RAVEN, suggested she take a class. “As luck would have it, Karen Austen was doing a watercolor class at Tack’s Greenhouse,” Horner said. “So off I went and there we were, sitting amidst all the lovely flowers. I produced a painting of a pansy that looked like a third grader had done it. Because of course, unbeknownst to me at that point, watercolor really is the most difficult medium there is.”
Undaunted, she joined the Fairbanks Watercolor Society and took workshops with nationally known artist and instructor Mel Stabin. “I could feel myself developing,” she recalled, “and I knew from early on that I was going to be a landscape painter. I think that comes from that early childhood attraction to the outdoors and just enjoying nature. And of course, living here, you’re living in a rather target rich place.”
After retiring in 2013, Horner devoted a growing amount of time to painting, initially with improvement her only objective. She began taking regular classes with local artist Vladimir Zhikhartzev. “A couple years later I decided, well, what the heck. I might as well apply for an Artist-in-Residence. So I applied for the 2015 Winter Artist-in-Residence with BLM and I was selected.”
She went out to the White Mountains where, “all of a sudden, my style just changed dramatically. I started to get really, really detailed. And I think it happened because I would look at these gorgeous Alaska scenes, and I wanted to recreate them for people using the watercolor medium”
Since then, Horner has shown her landscape paintings at Well Street, Bear Gallery, and with the Watercolor Society. “I don’t think you can really improve upon nature,” she said of her work. “So I am very definitely a representational artist. I’m recreating what I’ve seen in a certain place with watercolor. And for me, that means the detail is important.”
Working with watercolors is difficult, she said. “The problem is once it’s down it’s pretty much down. It’s not like oils where you can cover it up. You cannot cover up your mistake.” But, she added, unlike with watercolor paper, “with canvas you can just wash the paint off.”
Horner’s work with this new technique will be on view at Well Street, but her topic, as always will be the natural world as she has encountered it. “Except for a few paintings, every painting I’ve ever done is someplace I’ve been. From Antarctica to Greenland to the Yukon to here in Alaska. It’s a visual diary for me.”
Creating that visual diary has been the focus of her retirement, and Horner has no plans on stopping. “I just do what I’ve discovered I enjoy doing. And at this point in life, I think that’s plenty.”
Deb Horner’s show “Explorations: 57° N to 68° N” opens Friday at Well Street Art Company and will be on display through March. The gallery is located at 1304 Well St. and is open noon to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Horner can be found online at deborah-horner.pixels.com.
