English-born Isobel George has been living and painting in California for the past fifteen years, experimenting with various media including oil, acrylic and gouache, but always returning to her main love, watercolour, with which she feels a natural affinity and which allows her the freedom to adequately express the themes inherent in her work - emotion, movement, beauty.  Isobel's paintings are unusual in style and implementation...  she has developed a technique of working with the water, the pigment and the paper, which produces a flow and spontaneity essential to the feelings she wishes to express.

        "Part of the fulfillment I experience from my work, is knowing that others may recognize and relate to what I try to express.  When that happens, it's very rewarding."

Drawing subjects both from her imagination and from real life, Isobel begins a painting with a minimal sketch on heavy, rough watercolour paper.  She then soaks the sheet and, working wet-on-wet, applies the initial colours, using a one-inch flat brush loaded with pigment.  She adopts the paper as her palette, letting the colours blend and flow into each other as she works.  She then glazes one colour on top of another and, when the paint is dry, she applies black gouache in certain areas, which creates a vivid contrast between the opacity of the black and the translucency of the colour and also helps to shape the image.  Towards the completion of a painting, a touch of soft pastel and/or a little gold leaf may be added, providing an interesting textural interplay.

"I enjoy a direct connection with my chosen medium...  watercolour can be both powerful and delicate, opaque and translucent, promoting the expression of dark and light within one tableau."

From 1995 to the present, Isobel's art has been showcased in one-woman shows and group exhibits in museums and galleries throughout California.  Her paintings are in private collections across the United States and in England, France, Spain, and Chile; new works are currently available for viewing at her studio or on her web site.