"Moon River Peony" Painting

Hello! My name is Debbie Friis-Pettitt and I have been a watercolor artist for about 5 years now. I started out as a pencil artist doing western art shows. I loved to draw, but finally, after about 5 years, I decided I was not feeling challenged enough with my pencil drawings. The good thing about working in pencil for so long was that it gave me a really strong base in understanding the importance of value, structure and composition in a painting. There is a saying that value is the workhorse, but color gets all the glory! So along comes my dive into color and I loved it! Watercolor seemed so intuitive to me. Right away I lost myself in saturated colors and fine detail! Watercolor can be a challenging medium but I loved the way I could have control over the process but at the same time let the flow of the water take over.

I really love nature! My husband and I worked and traveled around the country for 8 years and did a lot of hiking and backpacking. I was able to amass a great collection of all kinds of flowers and birds and animals. I have so many paintings just waiting to get put down on watercolor paper! It is amazing to me the details of nature that you see and feel connected to. All my florals and nature paintings have a wonderful connection to someplace we have been and a great memory connected to it. Please enjoy my work, and I hope you feel the same connection to nature I do when I look at my paintings.