August and September are times when many people think of travel, and travel makes me think of travel sketches.
There is a particular pleasure in travel sketches; they carry a personal view and flavor quite unlike travel photographs, in that the artist is showing you their vision and feeling for the place and time in addition to a representation of its appearance.
Junko Ono Rothwell, an artist based in Georgia in the Southeastern U.S. has posted a number of her travel sketches in watercolor and pastel on her web site. These are from her visits to Italy (above, left), France (above, right) and Ireland.
Her sketches bring to bear her experience in painting landscapes in both oil and pastel. Her landscapes here in the U.S. often focus on marshlands and small streams, both Groegia and on the mid-Atlantic coast.
On her site you will also find her nicely realized still life paintings, also in both pastel and oil, and her watercolor floral studies. There is also a selection of figure work.
Her pastel renderings make good use of the textural characteristics of the medium, which lies somewhere between painting and drawing, and she brings some of that surface texture into her oil painting to very nice effect, with textural paint strokes and a wonderful use of broken color.
Rothwell studied in Japan at Okayama University and in the U.S. at Cornell. Her work has been in exhibitions and collections in both the U.S. and Japan and has been featured in a number of books and magazine articles on pastel, floral painting, and landscape.
Rothwell’s landscapes are done en plein air (see my recent post on pochade boxes), catching the fleeting atmospherics and light only available to the painter’s eye on location, just as she captures the immediate feeling of of a foreign place and time in her travel sketches.
I could swear I lived in that building in France in that upper right hand drawing! In one of those tiny rooms second tier from the top, no heat, no shower, no hot water, but overlooking the Champ du Mars!
hi,junko I like your painting n this amazing in your style,line and colour…but why you dont paint about your country,because japan is most beautiful n natural.I’m from Indonesia,saiko desyo ne…mata renraku suru.
I buy old paintings which frequently need a lot of rehab. I have one that I bought at auction and I like it a lot but can not read the artist’s name. Last name appears to be “Ono” and first name appears to start with “G.” I did a web search and got your site.
The painting appears to be watercolor and it ii a landscape which has a lot of 3 dimensional qualities with some raised portions. It is a wonderful painting and I am sort of obsessed with identifying every painting I get.
I know this is a long shot but do you have any ideas about the painting?
Thanks for taking the time to read this.
I forgot to comment on your work. From the earliest to the most recent you have really grown! I enjoyed your stuff and you must work very hard.
Thanks again!!