Recent Work by Paul Tooley

Paul Tooley
4710 Old Swimming Pool Rd.
P.O. Box 408
Braddock Heights, MD 21714
Telephone (301) 371-4291
Contact Paul by email

Growing up in Scarsdale NY in the 60's, I began drawing and painting at an early age. When I was 13 years old and my interest in art apparent, my father arranged for me to visit the studio of James N. Rosenberg, a New York artist known for his Adirondack landscapes and lithographs of the great Wall Street collapse. Mr. Rosenberg, in his 90's at the time, would critique my work and offered me much encouragement. In high school I took all the art classes I could, including "art major" for two successive years. After high school I spent three years racing motorcycles and working at various trades, before deciding to go back to college in 1974. There, I became interested in biology and pursued undergraduate and graduate degrees in Plant Pathology, leading to a 20+ year career in scientific research. In the past decade I've seriously rekindled my interest in art, stimulating me to pursue watercolors primarily. Drawing and painting are now frequent activities as I strive to build the skills necessary to paint what I want and how I want. I’ve taken workshops with some excellent watercolorists to learn the potential as well as the limits of the medium. Now, it’s up to me through persistence to solidify my own techniques and develop my style- it’s a fun but challenging journey. In 1998 I joined the Blue Elephant Art Center in downtown Frederick, and its been a great place to work, show, and be inspired by other artists.

I choose watercolor because of all it offers- the fluid brush marks, glistening washes, freshness, spontaneity, and total uniqueness. I try to exploit its full potential, working wet-in-wet and using the white of the paper as a design element. My work is "representational but loose", meaning that I work from a subject, but try to achieve a looseness, freshness, and distillation of its inner qualities. I use varied subject matter, including still lifes and florals set up in my home studio. I also work from photos- Ireland, Provence, Frederick County farm scenes, cityscapes, human figures, etc. I try to paint outdoors when I can. My true goal is to achieve in my finished work an elusive quality of light, form, freshness, and the wet look that only watercolor can give.

Click on the images for enlargements and more information. Listed prices are for framed work.