Seven Cats
mixed watermedia
by Deanna Thibault

Deanna Thibault holds a Bachelor of Arts from California State University, Fresno, and teaching credentials in California, Arizona and Kansas, in both secondary education and adult education.

She has taught art classes, both for credit and non-credit, in California, Florida, Kansas and in Arizona. She also taught in the Cook Islands for 3 weeks several years ago, and in Europe for 2 weeks. Currently, she teaches her own classes, and non-credit classes for Pima Community College in her Tucson studio, and additional non-credit classes for Pima Community College in Green Valley.

Deanna is a signature member of the Southern Arizona Watercolor Guild, and the Arizona Aqueous in Tubac, and is a juried member of the Collage Association of Southern Arizona. She also holds memberships in the Arizona Watercolor Association, the San Diego Watercolor Society and the West Texas Watercolor Society, and in Tucson, she is also a member of The Southern Arizona Artist Guild, Paperworks, and The Southern Arizona Fine Artist Guild.

She has had numerous awards and honors, and has had work accepted in several national and international shows, including three acceptances into the highly competitive Western Federation of Watercolor Societies Show.

Deanna's work ranges from impressionism to abstraction. It is always full of design, color and pattern. You can see her enjoyment in the work, and she teaches with the same enthusiasm. She doesn't want others to paint like she does, but to find their own way and experiment until they do. Her own work usually emphasizes black line. She draws with black ink, looking at the shapes in her subject matter, sometimes using a technique called blind contour drawing. In this technique, you look only at the objects, not at the paper as you draw, which creates very whimsical shapes. When she's happy with the shapes and overall composition, Deanna begins to paint in the color, sometimes adding collage elements to create her finished works.

Deanna is available to do contemporary commissioned work in her own style.