artbyjaquith.com
“If you hear a voice within that says ‘I cannot paint’, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.”
Vincent Van Gogh
People ask me time and time again, what do you paint? How does the artist answer that question. The words tell nothing about the art itself. You may ask, “What is a chair”? What does that question mean? An old chair, a new, modern chair? A blue chair? What color blue? I paint in oils, watercolor, pen and ink, with digital programs, acrylics, and glazes. I paint flowers, landscapes, people, fruit, and both real and impressions. Does that tell the one who asks the question what I paint? No. It tells the subject, but the one who askes the question may think of landscape as mountains, another of prairies, another of cityscapes, and another of the sea. This website is in answer to that question. Thank you for opening this website and taking a look. I hope what you see pleases you and inspires you to try on your own one or more of the many ways there are to create visual art.
“Night Sky” by Jaquith Travis (Enamel on Wood)
Night sky is, for me, the Moon and billions of stars, lighting a bit of the vastness that is above, beyond, and all around us. The sun is warming the other side of Earth. In Night Sky, we are looking at the moon as She is the Queen of Night.
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"There is, for me, a feeling of wonder that fills me when the piece I am on is finished and sits before me. I have this sense that the image came from someplace, somehow, outside myself. When creating an image it feels like watching something come alive with my hands. Is it Great Spirit working it’s magic through me?” Jaquith Travis
“The Many Colors of Iris” by Jaquith Travis Making art is something that no-one really can describe accurately. Art comes to the artist, soars in the mind, moves and dances, changes and flirts with the artist until finally the artist has to grab something to put it onto some format. It can be a lined journal, a napkin, a wall, floor or piece of cloth. Paint with wine, coffee, or draw with a ball point pen. Out comes the idea to either be built upon later or left on the napkin to land in the dustbin. I have painted with oils, acrylics, watercolors and glazes. I’ve painted with pen and ink, in black and white. I’ve painted on walls, floors, canvas, paper, wood and rugs. It matters not what the surface is or what the tools are. What matters is the desire to create something new, and curiosity. It is curiosity that drives me as much as the desire to create.
Ceramic Form and Glaze
When painting, whether with glaze, watercolor, oil or acrylic, nature is never far from my mind. This is one of a series of bowls with the blue heron as the centerpiece of the art. The great blue heron is a magnificentbird, one of a number of nature’s awe and wonder creations. It stands, gracefully, silently, watching, watching, watching.
When we create a painting we tell those who see the painting a bit about ourselves, the artist. The person looking at the art learns about themselves.
Through the art of painting, one can express any idea on any form of ceramic. Bowls are one of the ceramic forms I choose to use because, when one finishes the content of a bowl there is a surprise ending at the bottom.
We can express on a ceramic piece what ever we choose, just as we can in oil or watercolor, pen and ink, acrylics, or woodcarving, or any other form of visual art.
Watercolor Painting
Painting with watercolors is exactly what the name implies – painting with water and color. Glaze can be very much like painting with watercolor paints. When painting I am always expressing an idea, a feeling about something. When painting with watercolors there is always a choice. Do I want the colors to run together, or do I want to separate them, or both?
“Chinese Red Poppies” by Jaquith Travis
Digital creating It is quite magic, the way the art appears on the screen with the various available tools there are with which to create these artworks. These images I created with a program called Corel Paint
Painting with oils can be rewarding. The colors can be anything you wish them to be. They can be bright, dynamic, and vivid, or subtle, blending together in an easy, smooth so the changes are difficult to see, like an evening summer sunset. These are some examples of oil painting I’ve done over the years.
There are so many ways to create a piece of visual art. Pen and ink drawings can be very satisfying. The black and white lines of a pen and ink drawing (yes, there are lots of brilliant colors of ink should you choose to use them. I chose to do my pen and ink drawings with a speed ball pen and India ink.) The Speedball pen with the smallest tip is both challenging and exciting to use because no matter how careful one can be, the pen will eventually drip. It is then that the excitement begins. What shall we do with the drip? The following pictures are created half from drawings of what I am seeing when I work, and half from the drips that occured.
“Unexpected Journey” is a good example of how the “accidents can work for the artist. I started this painting to be nothing more than a wine glass and bottle with the candle. The shape of the bottle, the crow, the cat, the fish, the preying mantis and all the little dots are the results of drips falling from the pen. It is a journey through the imagination. “What is that drip telling me?”
So far I’ve not mentioned acrylics. I don’t use acrylics very often. They are fine paints and a lot of artists use them. They have more and more advantages as time goes on because those that make these paints are always finding new ways to improve the use of them. I like them for things like outdoor pots, murals on walls, doors, signs and the like.
Then there is the art of photography. More and more people are choosing this art form. It can capture what the photographer wants to capture, whether flora or fauna, people or landscape. Again, I don’t do much photography except when I am out in the garden.
Publications, Awards, Shows, and Donations…All the fun things that go along with creating visual art.
“FOREST SHADOWS” by Jaquith Travis.
Forest Shadows is a digital painting of my memory of the high Sierra Mountains. When a child and teenager, I stayed with my Aunt in a place called Shaver Lake. It was a beautiful mountain area, with all one dreams about when imagining a cabin in the mountains. There were the ancient, huge redwood trees towering above, a small soda fountain/restaurant with dance floor, and a path to a lovely, pristine and very cold, lake. This digital image I sold to WeMoon, a wonderful publication for women. It became the May, 2016 Calendar Image.
In 2004 I tried out for the Art On The Green Poster Contest. I created the poster idea with Corel Paint, digitally. Lo and behold, I won the contest. This was before digital work was known much or recognized, and I still feel that the judges didn’t know that this artwork was digital.
“Pilgrims Market” by Jaquith Travis
One day while in Pilgrims Market, Joe, the owner of the market called me into his office and asked me to do an oil painting of his store. I accepted the challenge and this is a picture of the resulting painting. He loved the painting, bought it, and it became the image on cups, a calendar, a Pilgrims Reward Card, and other fun Pilgrims Items. It also appeared on the cover of the Coeur d’ Alene Magazine. The gentleman to the right of the desert case is Joe.
DONATIONS
One my favorite things to do with the art of glazing is the paint bowls for the Food Bank. Before Covid 19 became an issue and everything was locked up tight, I would go to our local Ceramics outlet and paint to my hearts content. I felt so good that I could donate time and talent and skill for a cause I totally support.
GLOBAL ART FOR PEACE
Another one of my favorites is Global Art for Project for Peace. This is a fantastic project started by Katherine Josten. “Katherine Josten is an artist, educator, speaker and Founder/Director of the Global Art Project for Peace, a multi-cultural celebration of peace and diversity that has actively involved 160,000 participants in 95 countries on seven continents. Nominated for a 2002 UNESCO peace Prize for Tolerance and Non-Violence, her work inspires person and social evolution through creativity” (About Katherine Josten-Global Art Project)
My first Global Art Project for Peace in 2019 was an exciting exchange with a young man, in school, in Moracco. The process of exchanging art from the US and Moracco was long and challenging as we had to exchange through customs and prices and wages are very different in Moracco than here in the US. With a lot of communication back and forth and determination the exchange was completed.
In this art, the symbol of peace is food. Sharing soup with others is one of the most ancient symbols of peace. The bowls containing soup in this image are both Moraccan and American, and the images of food are grown in both places. The map shows the US and Moracco as the soup steams between us.
This piece became the Global Art Project for Peace, July, 1918 Calendar art.
In 2020 I exchanged art with a woman in New York. The Iris is a symbol of beauty and peace (Iris in Greek mythology was the Goddess of the Rainbow), and the feather is a the feather of a dove.
2021 was an exchange with a very talented and generous woman from Germany. Her work became a poster for that year on the Global Art Project for Peace Website.
This work I designed to be both modern and ancient. The paper is papyrus and the idea is that peace has been a quality humans have desired for centuries for themselves, their relationships and their countries.
In December of 2021 I took a class in Illumination. That class was so fascinating and the art so detailed that it became my chosen method to create the Global Art for Peace 2022 artwork.
My exchange artist in 2022 lived in Bavaria, in the city of Bucharest. Adina, a lovely young woman in Bucharest, organized an exhibit of Global Art for Peace participants in the Timmis Du Pris Gallery for the month of May, 2022. My piece for this project hung in the Timmis Du Pris Gallery for that show during that month of May
Peace by Jaquith Travis for Global Art for Peace, 2022
“Jazz for Art” by Jaquith Travis is a poster created for a fund raiser in Palatine, Illinois. At the time I belonged to the Palatine/Inverness Art Association and this poster advertised a fund raiser for the Association
Pam Grout, a travel writer and very talented author whose written several books (Thank and Grow Rich, E-Cubed, The Course in Miracles Experiment: A Starter Kit for Rewiring Your Mind (And Therefore Your World to name a few), writes a weekly blog called Weekly Digest for Pam Grout. She was writing about love and on a whim I sent her the above painting. She loved it and posted it as the image for that week’s blog. Needless to say, I was thrilled.
“Farmland” by Jaquith Travis. “Farmland is a painting of an actual farm in an area not far from where I live. I was commissioned by the Inland Northwest Food Network to create a painting that would become a print to be sold at the fund raiser.
Art by Jaquith 