An interview with 2025 Watercolour Residency artist Marilyn Rose

Tell us about yourself

I'm Marilyn Rose and I live in New Jersey. I practice as a full-time watercolour teacher and painter. I practiced graphic design for years and along the way discovered watercolour. I was increasingly asked to teach more watercolour in adult studios and art centres, and I fell in love with the medium of watercolour.

Can you describe your artist journey and how it led you to this residency at Manufacturers Village?

I studied painting in college at Washington University in Saint Louis. At the time I was doing really big abstract oil paintings, but I left that world to become a graphic designer immediately after college. So, I worked as a graphic designer, and I worked in the publishing world. I had my own graphic design studio. At some point about 25 years ago I felt the need to have fine arts in my life again, and a friend was giving a watercolour class, and I said, “Oh, what the heck!” I never seriously considered the medium of watercolour, and once I put the paint to the paper and saw what the water does and how that carries, I was just smitten. And so, I started taking workshops with various people I knew, or I'd heard about.

One of my students one day sent me a link to the announcement for this watercolour residency and said, “This sounds like you.” I had visited artists’ studios before in buildings like this where there are multiple studios. I've always dreamed of having my own studio. My space at home is small and doesn't accommodate larger work, and so I applied. I was very excited to get this opportunity.

What drew you to watercolour as your primary medium and how has your relationship with it evolved?

I originally thought of watercolour as being a very quiet medium and kind of ignored it. In college we didn't have courses in watercolour. The only experience I had with watercolour were with low-quality materials, and I didn't know what the material could do. The minute I started using really good watercolours I started seeing how wonderfully the paint and the pigment mix to create their own world. I always tell my students that you want to learn everything that the paint and pigment do, the materials and the brushes and everything else, and then let them lead you. And to me, watercolour has informed my life probably more than my life has informed my watercolour. Watercolour has really taught me a lot about watching the journey and seeing what the paint does and what does it want to do. To slow down and discover the wonderful things that happen from the materials and then follow them instead of the opposite way.

My relationship with watercolour has changed over the years because at first, I was trying to learn everything there was about how the pigment works and then I started playing with it in different ways then I had seen other watercolour artists working. My watercolour now has more splashing and dripping and the tension between trying to create an image and what the paint does. And I think that the form and content kind of meet on the surface of the painting and that to me is the thing that I love most about how my journey has progressed.

How has working in this space, Manufacturers' Village, influenced your process or your mindset?

Working in this space has been a dream. First of all, I am in a studio complex with other artists. The other artists, especially on this floor, have just been so wonderful and sharing and open, and I get to see what their artistic process is. So, working in a community of artists is very exciting. And then the physical space here. A lot of my work is very urban oriented. I like the grittiness of the city and the minute I looked out my window and saw these wonderful walkways it was, like, this is a subject meant to be. I've actually used this place as subject matter.

And then materials wise, having access to Winsor & Newton's wonderful paper and pigments and being able to fling the paint in a space where I have so much room to do that has been a dream. The space is big enough that I can have 2 or 3 things out and so when I walk in the studio in the morning and I look at something I did last night, and I can do something on it and then go over and start something else. It's kind of like I'm in dialog with several different paintings at a time.

Can you walk us through your creative process from the first idea to the final brush stroke?

My creative process sometimes begins at night or in my dreams, or as I'm walking by somewhere. It's a combination of a visual and a feeling. When I knew that I was going to have this space, I remember at night waking up and just dreaming about really big flinging brushstrokes and dripping paint. I didn't know what it would look like, but I knew what it would feel like. And then, depending on what I'm doing, if I’m doing something smaller, I will do a little thumbnail sketch of some sort, a composition. And then, I do draw, but I draw very loosely. When I'm painting, I feel like I'm drawing again, I'm not filling in shapes. Those paintings, the smaller paintings, I usually have some photo reference or several photo references to give me an idea of what it's going to be. And then sometimes those pieces will end up being a bigger piece. Sometimes they end as just that, and sometimes those small pieces have a new life the next day, or in a day or two, after they ruminate a little into a larger piece. Sometimes I just need to paint and I come in and I don't know what I'm going to paint, and I'll often do something I call an “imaginary landscape” or some kind of exercise and to prime the pump because I think that one of the things about painting is every time you sit down, you don't always get results. It's kind of like in music, you have to do scales first or things like that.

When I decide to work on a full-size sheet of paper, which is Winsor & Newton’s 22 by 30-inch paper, I prefer when I'm working on the large paper to work on the 300 pound one because it doesn't ripple as much, and it gives me a flatter surface. I try to cover as much of the paper to begin with as possible. I'm not working in one corner but really experiencing the whole paper. I tend to work on an easel when I'm working on a large piece, at least to start it, because I use my whole body for the brushstrokes. I use big brushes. I don’t like to fuss around, but to just use a lot of water and a lot of brushes. I intentionally leave white areas. I look at watercolours as kind of chiselling away, whereas working in acrylic or oil, it's like, working with clay and creating a sculpture where it’s additive. And to me, working with watercolour is like chiselling away. So, I like to chisel away at the whites on the paper, using big flat brushes and really covering as much of the surface as I can and getting that kind of the energy of the piece. And then I like to back off and look at it for a while and then come in and give it another layer the next day. I let it dry, see what the paint is doing, and then keep building the piece gradually. The nice thing about working on a big piece of paper is the paint has further to travel. As it's traveling, it does things. The paint has a mind of its own, whether it's a granulating colour, like Ultramarine Ash or French Ultramarine, where you see the little pigments and see what happens. You start to also experience the different layers. I think I get more layers in a larger piece. Seeing some of the colours, like Naples Yellow or Cerulean Blue, seem to sit on top of the surface. You start to understand what all the different colours do and how they all act differently. It's not just a colour that’s different, they act differently. A big piece I will put on the floor and splash the piece. I’m using my whole body. It's a little bit of a challenge with a big piece to cover that whole surface. To get from one end to the other. But that's the kind of energy of it.

What does a typical day in the studio look like for you during the residency?

A typical day starts the night before because before I leave the studio I like to have in mind, even if I feel like I've finished a painting, something else I'm working on. Usually I have something in progress, so I'll have something on my easel. I walk in and it greets me and kind of tells me that's what I'm going to work on today. If I don't know what I'm going to work on, I will do an exercise. And it's typically some of the exercises that I give my students to get them warmed up, either using a brush and figuring out all the different kinds of strokes you can make or doing an “Imaginary landscape.” I sometimes randomly pick three colours from a triad of colours and put them together and just play with the water and start things flowing. Then from there, I often get lost in my work for the day. Some days I teach from the studio here. I’m lucky to be able to bring my teaching gear here, since I teach on Zoom. My first thing in the morning will be either looking at what I've prepped the night before or quickly prepping. And in that case, it's usually from a photo reference. So, I'll do a quick drawing and be ready to teach on Zoom.

How have Winsor & Newton materials shaped or supported the work you created during this residency?

I love the Winsor & Newton watercolours because of the richness of the pigment. The paints are really juicy. The range of colours is great, and I can pick out transparent colours that really play well together. Specifically, I like using Burnt Orange or Perylene Violet, on one hand and either the Winsor Blue or French Ultramarine Blue together. There are some nice granulating qualities that really make the paints kind of sparkle together and they leave little rings when you drip them, where you can see little edges of the other colour. They have a life of their own.

The 300-pound paper is wonderful. It withstands a lot of water. I find that I don't even have to tape it down. It stays very flat, and I can work very flatly. And the 140-pound paper also is a wonderful surface. The sizing is great, and the water just flows with it. It just soaks in enough and gives me enough drying time. Winsor & Newton paper has been a wonderful discovery for me.

The big flat brushes are also great. People usually see a big brush and they're like, “Oh my God.” My students are always like, “You're using that on a small surface?” But you can use the edge of it or different parts of the brush. So, I love the big flat brushes.

What themes or ideas are you exploring through your current work?

Right now, in my current work, I'm exploring the edge of abstraction. So, the edge between the literal and the abstract, and between the urban world and the more aesthetically pleasing world. For instance, I think a lot of it is inspired by my surroundings here - the walkways, the bridges, and you'll see in one of my paintings, the windows. So, for instance, you have a natural flower inside and the building outside, and that tension really is something that I love to incorporate together.

Where do you draw inspiration from both inside and outside the art world?

I get my inspiration from the things around me. Sometimes it can just be driving in a car, and I look over and I see the way the light is hitting something and that will give me an idea of something I want to explore. Then I'll go through my pile of photos and try to find something that has the same kind of theme. I tend not to copy photos. I'm big on “It's a translation, not a transcription.” So, sometimes my worst photos become my best paintings because I have to rely on my memory and my feeling about it. In my teaching, I teach three sections, and I try to do the same theme, but not the same paintings. So, I find I work in a series that way. I have recently did some interiors of cafes and they all dealt with the same kind of backlighting and rhythms and abstracting very complex backgrounds but in different ways. So, the teaching also in some ways gives me inspiration for my painting.

What do you hope people feel or take away when they experience your watercolour?
I want people to participate in my paintings. So, a lot of times I will leave some pencil lines. They'll see the drip, they'll see the paint. They'll see the way it moves. I'm not trying to hide the hand of the artist. And I feel like the artist and the viewer kind of meet on the surface of the paper. If I've painted something, I’m bringing my experience to it, but the viewer is also bringing their experience to it. Where we meet is what the painting is about. So, if it compels them, that's the most exciting thing to me, that's the most successful thing.

What does innovation in watercolour mean to you and how do you try to push those boundaries?

To me, innovation in watercolour is doing something that isn't necessarily something you think about watercolour doing. It's perhaps mixing some materials sometimes or approaching it a different way. One of the paintings that I was working on here was a pot of geraniums on a windowsill. It actually is from my head. It started as a window, and then it became these flowers in front of it, and it wasn't working and it wasn't working, and then all of a sudden I grabbed a jar of white gesso that I had, Liquitex gesso, and I gesso it over areas of the painting that weren't working, and it was like I had nothing to lose. And I think that's where innovation comes from. Innovation to me often comes from failure or from where you're on the precipice of failure and letting yourself take that risk. And it's “only a piece of paper,” is what I love to tell my students. I let the gesso dry, and the next morning I came in with colour, and I was very excited by what I had. So, the innovation comes from not thinking, “This is what a watercolour should look like.” Rather, it's thinking, “What can I do with these materials?”

What does it mean to see the world "Through the Eyes of the Artist"?

When you talk about seeing the world through the eyes of an artist, you're talking about putting another lens on. I think artists see the world differently. You're talking about seeing the colour and the shape and the things, taking away sometimes the labels of what you're seeing. You're not seeing a tree. You're not seeing a window. You're seeing this wonderful rectangle with the burst of light reflecting on it. I'm always amazed that I will walk through town to do a plein air event or something and something will catch my eye, and I'll be painting it, and people will come over and say, “I pass that every day. I never thought about that as being something beautiful or seeing that the light hits it in a certain way.”

I always tell my students that when they're painting something, to paint somewhere where they’ve been, something they know because they see it differently. There's something the artist brings to their vision of a place and then it shows up in the work itself. You're seeing the special thing when you're seeing Through the Eyes of the Artist.

An interview with 2025 Watercolour Residency artist Marilyn Rose

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