Workhouse Artist of the Week: Gwendolyn C. Bragg

“I hope people haven’t shoveled so many walks that they won’t want to come see my pictures of snow,” said Gwendolyn Bragg, a February Featured Artist at the Workhouse Arts Center. 

Bragg’s exhibit, Winter White: Snowy Local Landscapes in Transparent Watercolor, is on exhibit in Building W-6 of the Workhouse Arts Center through the end of the month. At first the artist was not excited about drawing the month of February for her exhibit, since cold temperatures sometimes limit attendance. But then she had an idea. “I have winter scenes, I paint winter scenes with my class, and I like painting winter scenes,” she said. “I had the theme for my February show.” 

“Painting snow-covered landscapes is a challenge in watercolor, but also lots of fun,” said Bragg. 

She begins with a sheet of unpainted white watercolor paper as the white of the snow. “There is a saying that winter scenes are often admired but infrequently purchased,” she said.  “That’s because folks are drawn to warmth versus cold.” 

Bragg interjects warm light into her snow scenes using a set palette of colors. “I add a sunset, long reaching shadows with light, a lingering red berry on a tree, and other warm touches,” she said. Her palette is based on the double primary system.  “I have two blues, two yellows, and reds, all of which I augment with neutrals and other colors,” she said. 

To create a hint of flurries, Bragg adds a final step. “I paint opaque white gouache on a screen, then blow small puffs of air through the screen,” she says. She also has her own recipes for painting shadows on white. “My most valuable lesson as an undergraduate was learning to paint a white eggshell without white paint,” she said. It is a lesson she now passes along to her own students. 

Bragg paints from photographs that she’s taken. All her snow scenes are from locales in the United States, with many of them being from Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. “I like the typography and the nostalgia of the architecture that’s in Harper’s Ferry,” she said. A few of her newer pieces are of Occoquan Regional Park.

Bragg has been a watercolorist for 42 years. She began when she first moved oversees with her husband and six-month-old child. “I needed more to do than keep house and care for my son,” she said. “I needed something creative.” 

Her limited space influenced her decision to pursue watercolor.  “The dining room table was the only studio I had, and it seemed the safest and most adaptable to paint watercolor,” she said. 

“I don’t ever remember not loving art,” said Bragg. “I was the kid who was always drawing.” she said. “I remember in seventh grade a teacher stopping in the middle of what she was doing to pick up a picture from the top of a pile on the table and say ‘Who did this?’” It was Bragg’s painting.

Bragg earned a Bachelor of Science in Secondary Education from Madison College, now James Madison, and a Master’s degree in drawing and painting (watercolor) from same school. She teaches at the Workhouse Arts Center and at the Art League School in Alexandria.