Jeanne Powell

Traveling with Walter Bartman on his international painting workshops introduced me to the joy of painting. My imagination responded to his challenge to study light, color, and design in the landscape.

Nearly 25 years ago, I met Walt and artists from the Yellow Barn Studio and Gallery (Glen Echo Park, Maryland) as a participant in Walt’s workshop to Southern France. I was merely a photographer-observer of the Provence countryside and the many artists on that trip. I had never painted. I was a government economist on vacation. I loved to travel and relished immersion in the countryside, towns, and cities afforded by tagging along with artists. The Provence trip in 1997 led to dozens more trips and eventually to regular art classes with Walt

In 2003, my semi-retirement from a career as a research economist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) afforded me the time to pursue painting rigorously in Walt’s Painting Landscapes on Location classes at the Yellow Barn and workshops. With wonderful surprise, I found that plein air painting enriched my travel experience far beyond what my camera could. His local classes introduced me to the beauty and variety of the Maryland landscape.

I work in oil and in gouache. My work is representational but expressionistic, seeking to capture the feeling of the landscape. Plein-air experience includes a dozen years in classes plus more than twenty workshops with Walt in Maine, Big Sur, the Bahamas, Sicily, Prague and Budapest, Mallorca, Santorini (twice), Florence, Ireland, Mexico, Argentina, France, Cuba (twice) and the Italian Lakes, as well as Tilghman Island. I take advantage of local workshops by other Maryland artists and enjoy participating in a variety of plein-air paint-outs such as the Frederick County Barnstormers (annual), the Yellow Barn Green Paint-Out, and the Kensington Labor Day Art Show (annual). And I enjoy painting with other artist friends on our own trips to near and far places. Italy (anywhere), southern France, and Penobscot Bay, Maine are my favorite painting destinations.

I held solo exhibitions of my work at the Yellow Barn Gallery in 2006, 2008, and 2014 and participate frequently in Montgomery Art Association, Chevy Chase and Potomac Women’s Clubs, and Gaithersburg Fine Arts group shows. My paintings have been accepted in many juried shows sponsored by the Yellow Barn, the Gaithersburg Fine Arts Association, the Hill Center, and the Bethesda Urban Partnership and have won numerous awards, including first prizes and Best in Show in a number of shows. I have been a member of Gallery 209 at Artists & Makers, Rockville, MD since its inception in 2017.