I paint in all water-media (acrylic, gouache, casein, watercolor) with watercolor being my primary choice. There is nothing like the translucency, flow, and blending of color that watercolor offers. Watercolor keeps me challenged with its spontaneous movement, use of gravity, drying stages, and timing. Getting those attributes to work together is both fascinating and thrilling. While I usually save gouache and casein for sketch studies, many subjects work well in both watercolor and acrylic and I enjoy exploring and exploiting both mediums to see how I can use their best features. Whatever the subject, no matter the medium, capturing emotion and atmosphere is key. They say color is king but I find using a variety of values and edges helps express feeling and emotion in paintings. I love both a bit of mystery and detail in my paintings, so while I strive to not tell everything and let the viewer participate in the interpretation of my work, at the same time, I love a punch of detail where the painting pulls you in and captures your attention. I grew up in an artistic family. My mother, Juanita Watkins Moore was an oil and acrylic painter and exposed me to drawing at an early age. I thought it only natural for people to have easels as part of their home furniture. Art is a family tradition that has been traced back to at least 1619 when an ancestor, Otto Marseus van Schrieck of Amsterdam was a sought-after oil painter and instructor. While I enjoy the challenge of painting a variety of subjects, my favorites are landscapes and portraits. I usually have 2 or 3 paintings in process at a time. Capturing emotion and atmosphere is key and for that reason, I enjoy plein-air painting. I will often sketch a concept or start a painting on location which enables me to study and explore various atmospheric elements. Years of doing this enables me to add these elements to all of my paintings, even those painted solely in the studio. An award-winning artist and workshop instructor, I teach weekly watercolor painting classes, conduct several workshops each year and have a distance-learning website where I offer watercolor video lessons for students around the globe. I love being able to share my passion of creating art with others and have found it truly can change lives.