Fort Worth, Texas Watercolorist Randy Meador says he owes his art career
to former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. “While reading a Churchill biography in 1991, I stopped and
meditated on his words, ‘When I paint, nothing else exists.’ I wanted desperately to go there…
regularly.”
The former marketer and speaker began painting that day.
Meador graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 1985
with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, but initially chose a different career
course in a variety of businesses.
“I pestered Buck Taylor
(watercolor artist) at a Fort Worth Stock Show in 1992 and asked him who were
the best watercolor artists, then proceeded to study all the works of Winslow
Homer, John Singer Sargent, Paul Cezanne, and others. They were my early teachers.
I figured, ‘why not learn from some of the greats?’ Afterward, I just taught myself by making notes of everything that did and did not work. In the beginning, I think I owned every watercolor technique book ever written, and
later it was humbling to find myself competing with many of those authors in
juried exhibitions.”
When asked about inspiration for his subjects and technique,
he draws what appears to be a sincere blank. “I’m really not sure
I know what that means. I simply look
for something that interests me and try really hard to render not what I see,
but what I wished I could see…what I want it to look like… hopefully without
screwing it up.”
“I appreciate the accolades and kind words I'm beginning to receive, really I
do... I think they're mostly relatives. But I try to abide by a phrase my father used to say concerning whether anyone notices what you do:
‘When the spotlight hits, be dancing.’”
“If you’re engaged in something about which you are truly
passionate, you're less likely to notice when a spotlight has found you.”