Washing over the watercolor stigma
by: Lauren LaRocca

Philadelphia artist Brook Overline surrounds herself with toys and fun, random objects, the subject matter for her watercolor pieces -- but we're not talking still lifes.

Marbles become an orbit of planets, and pick-up sticks are transformed into snakes in Overline's world. Objects "convey a different feeling when I use them in my pieces," she said. "(I'm) putting commonplace items in a different arena. Then, they become something else. They go beyond what they literally are."
Are they marbles? Are they planets? Are they both or neither? The viewer's observation may depend on the scale in which the pieces are viewed. The marbles in "Ka Boom" represents the Big Bang, while "Spinner Jacks" are a type of fireworks. The titles are meant to be used as springboards. "The titles are part of me," she said. "They are part of the process."

She started in photo realism and figurative work but has always liked to bring things around her into her pieces. She recently saw the Frida Kahlo exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where, coming out of the show, they "dump you into the museum store." Among the Frida notecards and Frida mugs ("How many people want to drink coffee from a Frida mug?" Overline asked, noting that the artists' work is not exactly appetizing.) was a book of Frida paper dolls. The colorful dresses spoke to Overline -- and she loves paperdolls. Diego, she said, made her wear fabulous Mexican outfits after they married, "keeping her in a certain position."

Overline is brainstorming a piece devoted to Frida, to be started soon. It's not necessarily the toys -- or paperdolls -- that speak to Overline but the element of their shapes and the graphic quality they provide her with. "If I don't have it, I build it," she said. "I consider myself a draftsman. For a time, I worked in construction. There's nothing I can't build."

The artist, who loves tools of all sorts, has also done blueprints for buildings, which may have started her inclination to use grids in her art. "The grid has, since the beginning, seeped its way into the pieces," she said. "The grid became such an important element. It created a space of itself." What started as a tool for enlarging her drawings from vellum to Rives BFK print paper (she doesn't use watercolor paper) became an element of the paintings themselves. In more recent works, Overline's grids have taken on new meaning and life, sometimes shown as broken pieces, falling off the page. Because printing paper is smooth and soft and, most importantly, thin, nothing can be erased. "Because it's so unforgiving, it's meant for me," Overline said. "It allows me to make mistakes and keep going."

She doesn't throw away any of her pieces. In fact, she hasn't trashed a piece since her first... After graduating college, she worked mostly in sculpture and acrylic. A friend told Overline about a watercolor contest in California and suggested she enter.

"Do you know I took first prize and won $500?" she said, giggling. Of course, that was after she washed away a few watercolor pieces in her bathtub because she hated them.
"I thought, maybe there's something to this," she said. "Most people think of watercolor as still-life paintings. It has this negative connotation that it cannot be cutting edge or that it has to be small-scale."

She calls her pieces abstract realism, and some of them are quite large. "I hope to do for watercolor what hasn't been done," she continued. "There's still a stigma with it -- including what people will pay for it. Watercolor deserves a different label at this point."
"Though her paintings do not have the thickness of acrylic or oil paints, Overline builds several layers of watercolor, so that objects unrelated to one another collide on the same plane.

"I work and I work and I work, constantly building layers ... constantly running to the sink to getget clean water." She creates her own palette and described her excitement, when she "hits the right color," to that of a child opening a box of 84 crayons.

"I'm still in the developing process," she said. "I'm still gaining momentum."

Arts & Entertainment, The Frederick News-Post, April 17, 2008.