Seascape1
Watercolor

Kay Culpepper, a Palo Alto resident for 37 years, is an artist who paints, literally, from coast to coast. She has been a student of art and literature since childhood . Her paintings have been exhibited locally and in Florida, her birthplace. Her works are owned by art lovers from New York and New Jersey to Puerto Rico, Florida, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and California, too!

Although Kay has studied and painted in France, England and Mexico, she is constantly drawn to paint those subjects with which she is most intimately acquainted--Water, Hills and Sky, in the places she loves best. The stark contrasts between the warm rich colors of California and the softened shades of the Florida Gulf Coast evoke slightly different styles and choices in the manner of painting. Kay paints mainly "wet in wet" giving these images of organic matter back to life. There is freshness and vitality in these paintings that will bring the viewer into the artist's experiences. These familiar California sights come alive and they are paintings you will want to live with.

Kay began life as a Naturalist and became someone who seeks to support the protection of wild places--the hills, the undeveloped coast of California, and the few remaining wilderness coasts and wetlands of Florida. Some of her early paintings of endangered land are the only records of land now heavily developed. A recent subject has been the Big Sur Coast, still relatively isolated and serene.

"Since childhood I have been intensely interested in the natural world about me and in recording those patterns and forms that I observed. Seeing as opposed to Looking has been my primary goal. Expressing what I see then becomes almost necessary to my being. Sometimes I feel that a paint brush or pencil is directing me rather than the other way around.

I have loved painting this series of open spaces, Water, Hills and Sky! I am strongly attracted to wild places and I am intimately acquainted with all of these. They lend themselves so readily to watercolor, as do most natural things, which are mainly water in any case. What better medium could I use than their own?"

Studies: Fine Arts, Florida State University, Stanford University, Pacific Art League, Palo Alto Art Center, Foothill College computer graphics, Workshops with Sally Robertson. Other local teachers: George Rivera, Jim Smyth, Richard Becker, Steve Curl, Kay Carne, Robin Scholl

work: Kay exhibits and sells her work in Florida and California. She is also an instructor of drawing and watercolor for children and adults at the Pacific Art League, the Palo Alto Art Center and the Palo Alto Adult School. She teaches privately as well.

Miller Cascade
Watercolor

Bean Hollow 1
Watercolor

Kay Culpepper is a member of the Pacific Art League teaching faculty. She teaches Beginning Watercolor.

Contact Kay at:

kay@ctn.com
(650) 857-0640

Bean Hollow2
Watercolor