By David Rogers. BLOWING ROCK, N.C. — Born and raised in colorful New England by a professionally trained artistic mother, it was only natural for JoAnn Tippin to catch the creative bug. What might have come as a surprise to everyone: Tippin’s falling in love with working with the watercolor medium (since her mother worked largely in oils).
“When it comes to painting, New England is a target rich environment,” said Pippin in a July 15 interview with Blowing Rock News, at Edgewood Cottage where she is one of the featured artists July 14-20, in the Blowing Rock Historical Society’s “Artists in Residence” series.
“New England is beautiful,” said Pippin, “all the way from the mountains to the coastline. “My mother saw that I had an interest in painting, so I enrolled in art classes from the time I was 10 and 12 years old. Beyond the beauty of the region, the people… well, there is a spirit of independence there. So it allows an artist to stretch beyond what others might call boundaries.”
Not uncommon for an artist, the prospect of material gain hardly crosses Pippin’s mind.
“I don’t give a thought to the money,” she said. “It’s the process that gets and keeps me going. When I started taking watercolor lessons, I abandoned painting with oils. Oil painting occurs in layers, dark to light and you can make changes all along the way and you mix your colors on the palette. With watercolors, I quickly realized that it had a mind of its own. As you add your layers, you let it do its thing. Water and pigment and the different colors that you are using… they mix together on the paper rather than on your palette. That inspires me because I like to interact with what is going on, on the paper.”
When it comes to her biggest influences, Pippin admitted that she only had one of the Joe Miller’s watercolor classes
“Joe’s classes were very popular and they were hard to get into, so I only was able to take one. But Joe had a number of nationally known teachers of his own and I tried to take at least one every year to gain new ideas. I was greatly influenced by Alexis Levine (https://www.alexislavineartist.com/about-alexis), who has a very intellectual approach to watercolors. Another watercolor teacher… my first watercolor lessons were in Alexandria, Va., in the early 1990s.
“At the time, I was working full-time with a publisher and we were digging into U.S. law and how it could be digitized. That was a developing thing back then and my background was as a law librarian. I had to teach the programmers what to code, what people would want to retrieve from a digitized law library. I was working very long days, so my watercolor lessons proved to be a release at the end of the day.”
Pippin is now an Artists in Residence veteran.
“This is my fourth time exhibiting here,” she said. “My first time was very early on when they were just getting things organized, and I had the whole cottage. Now there are two artists exhibiting at the same time, which is much better. If you are paired with the right person, two artists at the same time allows them to compare, contrast and even complement each other. This is the third time Jack (Hamrick) and I have shown together. He is great because he is quite different and we complement each other.”
Asked how she got into art in the first place, other than revealing an interest in her mother’s eyes, Pippin revealed a practical side of her upbringing.
“When I was in high school, I really wanted to go to art school but my parents suggested that I think about a different major. My other love was books, so I decided to become a librarian. My commitment to art really came later in life.”
The Artists in Residence series at Edgewood Cottage runs each year from May to October, with different artists exhibiting each week. The cottage is open to visitors each day from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with no admission charge. Many, if not most of the art being exhibited is for sale and a portion of the sale price goes to support the work of the Blowing Rock Historical Society.
