Rana Chalabi is a Syrian/Lebanese artist who works in Cairo, Egypt. She works within a variety of mediums, like charcoal, inks, mixed media, oils, sculptures, and printed graphics, but is best known for her serene watercolor landscapes. She often does her watercolors on site, or in “plein air," but also works from photographs in her studio on the banks of the Nile. Through her use of watercolors, Chalabi can play with layers of color and light, representing both nature and architecture.

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Twin sister artists, Beibei and Leilei Chen, explore the relationship between culture and the natural environment. Their watercolors tell stories of life and death, science and art, and religion and politics. In their images, Leilei and Beibei use multiple methods and media to represent pollution in the landscape as a global issue, on both macro and micro levels. By exploring how the medium of watercolor lends itself to blending colors, their images appear like an image looking into a microscope.

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Bruce McCombs is a local artist specializing in painting, especially watercolor, and etching. Through his images, McCombs turns ordinary objects and scenes into spectacular displays and colorful reflections. His subjects include urban settings such as New York City or his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, architecture, neon signs, planes, trains, and vintage automobiles. The transparency of watercolor allows McCombs to paint everyday scenes, spaces full of light and shadows, as well as a variety of architectural elements, from shiny chrome to translucent glass.

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Mike McDonnell was a Muskegon, Michigan-based artist who studied art in both Chicago and New York. Initially receiving training in classical portraiture and working primarily with oil paints, it wasn’t long before McDonnell found his own style in watercolors. He became well known for still life paintings with the most absurd arrangement of items, often precariously stacked, in dynamic colors. McDonnell would apply multiple thin layers of watercolor paint to achieve the rich, vibrant, and realistic images he painted. The results of his painting technique are not the typical look of watercolor. The realism of his paintings shows mastery of the use of the medium.

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In Rein Vanderhill’s large floral and fruit paintings, he uses watercolor to create high contrast and intense colors as well as subtle gradations and shadows. Vanderhill is noted for focusing on the unusual shapes of shadows on leaves and petals, often making the deep, dark negative shapes between them the most interesting part of the paintings. The paintings look almost photographic from a distance, but when viewed up close, the smooth paint strokes can be seen.

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