Tom Hoffman Watercolors

Watercolor has been my primary medium for forty years, and still, somehow,  the medium manages to stay just beyond my grasp. The learning process has mainly been a matter of letting go – giving up control – so that painting becomes more and more an act of watching the paint do what it wants. Content becomes less and less specific, until, sometimes, it is released entirely.

For as long as I have been painting, I have also been teaching. The two practices are now inextricably interwoven. Painting influences teaching, of course, but just as often what I’m teaching can have an effect on how I paint. The need to articulate the subtleties of seeing form rather than content, for example, has helped me gain detachment from my immediate agenda while I am painting.

Over the years, I have acquired a reputation as someone to work with when you want to loosen up your brushwork or simplify your approach. This is a lot to live up to. Trying to stay one step ahead of my students on the “free and easy” scale may have accelerated my own evolution. Who can say which came first?