Joanne Ritter

Joanne RitterI cannot remember not being able to draw.  In the sixth grade I received a scholarship to attend summer classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art School.  In high school I took as many art classes as allowed and painted all the backdrops for the school plays.  I attended Ohio Wesleyan University and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with a concentration in oil painting.  I was elected into Delta Phi Delta Art Honorary in my junior year.   My professors taught me design, structure, and discipline and gave me the foundations from which to grow and these last a lifetime.  After my third child left home for college I began studying watercolor at the Springfield Museum of Art School in Springfield, Ohio.  The first three years were difficult as I tried to control and understand the paint and how it worked on the paper and how the paper surfaces worked with the paint.  I don’t remember any breakthrough painting—-it was just me and my self confidence that took hold and I have been painting in watercolor ever since.  Since then I have taken workshops with many notable American artists.  Most of my paintings are records of places my husband and I have traveled and each locale has its own uniqueness in its architecture or landscape.  The doorways of Charleston, the hydrangeas and the sea of Cape Cod, the harbors of Maine, the architecture of Europe are all waiting to be translated into a painting.  My camera is always ready to record our journey for the possible painting.

I am an active member and past president of the Logan County Art League and a member of the Western Ohio Watercolor Society since 1991, where most recently I won an honorable mention in the member show.  I have been the featured artist at the YMCA gallery and continue to display there, the Mary Rutan Hospital gallery, Canterberry Coffee, the Logan County Fair, and the Art League Gallery, all in Bellefontaine,  and Tea Baggers in Urbana.  In March and April of 2010 my paintings were exhibited by my alma mater in the Mowry Alumni Center on the Ohio Wesleyan campus under the title “Journeys Home and Away”.  Two of my watercolors were then chosen by the art director to be reproduced in the Ohio Wesleyan University 2011 calendar which is sent to all the alumni.  I participate in the annual November art show and sale in Bellefontaine and can be contacted through the art league website.

Watercolor has been a wonderful journey.