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​Arlene Nolan

My interest in art is lifelong, and my childhood ambition was to be an artist.  My formal art background began much later, however—my B.A. is in Elementary Education, minor in Psychology, as my parents did not consider being an artist a practical goal.  After college I began taking a wide variety of classes including drawing (still life, figures, and landscape), painting (oil and watercolor), collage, and color and composition.  My studies began in San Jose and continued in McLean, VA, the Los Angeles area, and finally the Monterey Peninsula.  I have taken watercolor workshops with well-known painters Jane Burnham, Betty Lynch, Zoltan Szabo, George Post, Bob Nash, George Bowman, Richard Yip, and Rex Brandt.  My paintings have been in many juried shows and have received numerous awards.
 
My paintings are done almost exclusively in watercolor and/or acrylic ink, both on traditional watercolor paper and also on Yupo, an archival synthetic paper with a slick surface.  Pastel, colored pencil, and collage are sometimes used to complete a painting as well as various other media including acrylics, gouache, and various grounds.  The immediacy of liquid media and the “happy accidents” which occur are a continual challenge and adapt well to an intuitive approach; I rarely have a subject in mind when I begin a painting, and colors and shapes are balanced as I paint.