Don’t put Cynthia Watson in a box.
“You can’t even tell these are mine,” she says, gesturing to paintings and pieces in her gallery: still lifes, landscapes, portraits, and abstracts, all featuring different techniques, colors, and styles. There is a through-line, though: a frenetic energy expressed through her brushstrokes and color.
Watson grew up in Indianapolis, where her grandmother would buy her paper and markers, and she later studied at Indiana University’s Herron School of Art and Design. Since 1983, she has lived in the Evansville area, where she raised three children. She works out of her studio and classroom in Welborn Plaza, a second-floor space filled with her paintings and works-in-progress, reference art books, and tubs and smatterings of art supplies.
Before opening her studio, she left her mark as a sign painter and muralist. She painted an exterior sign (now obscured by ivy) at Gerst Bavarian Haus and most recently rendered a mural of the old Sterling Brewery inside Sterling United Federal Credit Union on West Franklin Street. The bank was where brewery employees would cash their paychecks, Watson says. The brewery at Fulton Avenue and Division Street was razed in 1998.
While she does like to capture real moments in time in her landscapes and portraits, she doesn’t adhere to hyperrealism. “I like to show the feelings,” Watson says. “I like to get emotion out of people or to show how I’m feeling by color.”
That philosophy is the core of her art classes, Art From the Heart. In her studio, she teaches weekly courses for children and adults. Her young students exhibit at Haynie’s Corner First Friday events, in Arts Council of Southwestern Indiana’s annual “Young at Art” installation, and at her studio. She gives lessons on several mediums — “everything but pastels,” she explains — but the main lesson is on individual expression and experimenting. “Kids are not scared,” she says. “Adults are scared. Everyone’s going to make a mistake, but the kids could not care less.”
Watson’s art explores emotions and also connects interior lives with nature. Through a recommendation from Jessica Inman, co-owner of Inman’s Picture Framing + Fine Art, Julianna Clark commissioned Watson to create artwork for her Newburgh, Indiana, home.
Watson completed a trio of watercolors capturing the tranquility along the banks of the nearby Ohio River. Since then, Clark has added seven pieces by Watson to her collection.
“I’m drawn to Cynthia because she brings the outside in,” Clark says.
See Watson’s art, along with pieces by painter Joey Luzar, at “Emotive Virtuoso,” a free exhibit of the Ohio Valley Art League on display Sept. 29-Jan. 9 at Henderson, Kentucky’s Gallery 101. Call Watson at 812-484-9459 for commissions and classes.
