Water fowl in water color

WASILLA — Terry McAnalley has taken an empty nest and filled it with artistic explorations into the lives of water fowl.

Earlier this month, her efforts on canvas won considerable praise back in her home state of Minnesota, as she placed second in Water Color in the 2017 Arts in Harmony International Juried Show. It will hang in the Blaine City Hall through March 30, and then be seen by thousands of more eyes at the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis, chosen for that honor by the institute’s Curator of Exhibitions and Collections, Curt Pederson, a juror in the Arts in Harmony contest.

It will hang there from April 8 to May 21, and though McAnalley won’t be able to make it there to see either display, plenty of her family from back home will.

Terry and her husband Tony moved to Alaska 30 years ago, where Tony was stationed at Fort Richardson, and today their home in Wasilla features a number of Terry’s works in water color, all of the latest focused on ducks.

“I’ve always drawn and painted and I took a water color class in college in the 1980s — that got me hooked on water color,” McAnalley said. “To be able to create depth with color and have the underpainting that I do show through, so I could paint an abstract underpainting in a light wash, and then paint whatever I wanted over it.”

The water colors allow McAnalley play with reflections off surface water like no other, and her favorite work “Courtship” — the one hanging at the Blaine City Hall now — depicts a lively interaction between a male and female duck.

“I photographed them in Anchorage on a lake,” she said. “The male in the foreground was splashing his wings and you couldn’t see the female was behind him, but when I clicked the shutter, she peeked out.”

In McAnelley’s process, she sketches the image based on the photograph and then begins applying layers of water color.

“I try to work most of it out in the drawing rather than chancing it on paper,” she said. “The last years I’ve been working mostly with birds. I started out with florals, then portraits, but I like the birds… I really enjoy going out and photographing them and watching how they interaction. It’s a lot of fun to come back and paint the reflection of the water and the splashing and try to recreate the movement.”

Spying on ducks in their natural habitat, McAnalley said she’s learned quite a lot about the species.

“It’s interesting how they interact with each other — they’re not so peaceful, and that surprised me,” she said. “They’re very competitive. That, and just the way they move through the water. The swans rock back and forth, and the way they swim with the little ones.”

A signature member of the Alaska Watercolor Society, McAnalley is hoping exposure from contests like those in Minnesota will help her start selling her work again.

“I had been selling my artwork years ago and I stopped for awhile,” she said. “But my family has grown now and I’m able to focus more on that.”