Capturing the Candid Moment in Acrylic
A watercolor painter who harbored admiration of impasto oil painters, Bev Jozwiak has found a happy medium in acrylics.
By Amanda Metcalf
From family beach vacations to children at play, Bev Jozwiak‘s subjects are the stuff of countless family photo albums. Her thick acrylic brushstrokes, however, capture the energy and feeling of the candid moment better than any camera ever could.
The Camera’s Role in the Process
Don’t be mistaken, however. Jozwiak loves her camera and the thousands of reference photos it’s produced. So pervasive is the camera in her life that her kids and grandkids ignore it. Years ago, when her daughter Briley was in a wedding, the photographer had to instruct Briley to look into the camera.
Jozwiak loves the authenticity, the real-life feel of truly candid pictures. Many of her paintings, such as Universal Canvas, depict the subjects from behind. “I don’t like people to know I’m photographing them,” she says, adding that she prefers to capture them “doing their everyday thing, not posed.”
Frankly, that approach sells better, too, she explains. It’s easier to project one’s own experiences onto the paintings that don’t include detailed, recognizable faces, she says, adding that she often hears viewers of her art say, “That looks like my kid.”
Jozwiak takes 50 or 60 photos for every few she prints out for reference. Still, she has about 10 boxes of categorized photos that come out during her downtime. (Ballet, birds, and beach represent just the Bs in her collection.) So “watching TV” actually means having background noise playing while flipping through her boxes for inspiration for her next painting. It’s a habit that drives her husband a bit bonkers, but, she asks, “How can I change?”
The Photograph as Starting Point
Jozwiak often combines figures from multiple photos into one painting. In fact, her daughter, now a professional ballet dancer with Ballet Tucson, has appeared multiple times in individual paintings. It helps that Jozwiak often photographs potential subjects in consistent light: either indoors near a window or in the early evening to capture long, dramatic shadows.
She’s not one for experimental sketches but rather plans a strong horizontal and a strong vertical, both at least a little off center. The vertical typically is the figure she’s painting, and it stands out from Jozwiak’s blurred backgrounds, which has become typical of her work over the past three years. She almost always starts with a warm base coat and then draws a detailed depiction of her subject. Once the paint starts to go on, though, she forgets about the lines. They help her paint anatomically accurate figures, but the rest is artistic license.
Jozwiak works swiftly, usually producing four paintings a week and sometimes as many as eight. The day before we talked, she had finished one painting, started and finished another, and begun a third. Jozwiak always was fast, but the speedy approach also allows her to achieve the impasto look using acrylics. She starts at the top of a painting, working on the heads and skies or backgrounds simultaneously, and then moves downward. She paints just one, thick layer, only occasionally adding fresh paint to the background near the head if she takes too long on the face and hair.
Lost and Found
Jozwiak had painted with acrylics in college, but thinning the paints as much as her fellow students did struck her as ridiculous. If she was going to paint in watermedia, why not watercolors? And so, she became a watercolor painter.
For 18 years after college, though, the painting stopped, other than the occasional hobbyist piece. She worked as a packager for Lay’s potato chips until her dissatisfaction with the job led her to panic. With her husband’s support, she took the plunge to painting full-time.
Over the years, she found her watercolor applications getting thicker and thicker. And so, six years ago, she tried out a few tubes of acrylics leftover from her early college days. Miraculously, they still worked, and she liked the feel. (The odor of oil solvents simply won’t do for her small studio.)
She found that acrylics gave her an outlet for when she wants to paint thickly, and that freed her watercolors for days when she wants to let the paint run. Neither medium has to pull double-duty anymore, though she does borrow tricks and techniques from one medium for use in the other. Lean on Me borrows a signature of her watercolor paintings: unfinished works in which the paint drips to the bottom of the paper. In both media, she loves lost-and-found edges.
An Artistic Instinct
Following her gut has worked out so far. The woman who made $3,000 in her first year of full-time painting now shows in eight galleries and teaches across the U.S. And she expects to evolve plenty more. Just as she started with photorealism in college and moved on to Impressionism, she’s lately begun to embrace abstracted backgrounds. You can witness the evolution from Backstage Butterflies to A Loving Hand. The longer you paint, the freer you are with your vision, she says.
“And the more I enjoy the process, sales skyrocket.” In 10 years, she predicts, she won’t be a big fan of the stuff she’s doing in 2015. But for now, both she and the viewers of her art are enjoying the “confidence in a confident brushstroke.”
Tools of the Trade
Bev Jozwiak shares her thoughts on a few of her favorite products.
- FABRIANO ARTISTICO 140-LB., HOT-PRESSED PAPER OR GESSOBORD: Jozwiak likes movement in her work and likes the paint to slide. These surfaces are ideal to achieve the results she wants.
- M. GRAHAM AND GOLDEN HEAVY BODY ACRYLICS: She had tried the long- drying, open acrylics, but she never could comfortably adjust to them in her painting routines. As a fast painter, she doesn’t need them anyway.
- M. GRAHAM QUINACRIDONE RED AND GOLDEN INDIAN YELLOW HUE: Jozwiak employs thick layers of paint in her basecoat, but using these two colors for her warm basecoat shade makes it okay if she misses a spot or two.
- 2B PENCIL: She tried a water-soluble pencil but this simple classroom staple feels more comfortable and gives her better results.
- PALETTE KNIFE: Jozwiak scratches into the paint to convey rain, typical weather for her home state of Washington.
About the Artist
A fine arts graduate of Western Washington University, 90 minutes north of Seattle, Bev Jozwiak followed her great-aunts, grandmother, aunt and father into painting. Whether acrylic or watercolor, her Impressionistic works have earned her shows in prestigious galleries, signature status in The American Watercolor Society, the Northwest Watercolor Society, Watercolor West and the National Watercolor Society, and a spot among the Who’s Who in American Art. Jozwiak resides in her hometown of Vancouver, Washington, with her husband of more than 30 years. You’ll find her in-person workshop schedule, additional paintings and more info on her website at bevjozwiak.com.
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