Rebecca Biddle Wood Anderson
From the time I was a very young child, I wanted to be an artist. My great grandfather, C.E.S. Wood, was an artist as well as an author, poet, lawyer and nature lover and one of the founders of the Portland Art Museum. Although he died before I was born, I always idolized my great grandfather (and still do), hoping that one day I would be able to create beautiful paintings like he did. Throughout my life, my Dad would often pull out C.E.S.’s unframed watercolors to show me and if I was really lucky, he would give me one for Christmas or a birthday. These paintings are sacred to me.
I began seriously painting when I graduated early from college and had a year of time on my hands. My first painting ever was a watercolor painting of Mount Hood, Oregon, with its reflection in Trillium Lake, and that painting is hanging on my wall today. I remember every detail about painting that painting, exactly where I was, what I was thinking, the materials I used and how it went! That is the amazing thing about paintings – each and every one of them creates an experience that is unforgettable and permanently imprinted into the memory. In that sense, each painting is like a special friend which makes it hard to part with originals.
After my time off, I went on to law school and soon thereafter realized as a practicing lawyer that my spirit is not fulfilled when I stay solely in the left side of my brain. So, throughout my career as a lawyer, and as a mother of four (now grown) children, I have always pursued painting as a serious endeavor. I have taught watercolor classes to hundreds of children, as their “Art Mom” in the Boise Public School District and have taught hundreds more people of all ages and backgrounds watercolor painting through YMCA classes and instructional DVD classes I produced through “Brush of Genius”. Most of my paintings are based on places I have adventured from Idaho to Oregon to Europe (especially France), Canada, Australia and many other places in between. My emphasis is in Idaho and Oregon because that is where I spend most of my time with my husband and my family in the great outdoors. I can often be seen with my husband by the side of a river painting while he is fishing and my joke to him is that unlike fishing, I never end the day empty handed! Several years ago, I started painting in acrylics as well because, as a water-based medium, it offers me the same flow and excitement that watercolors do. I love the boldness of acrylics and usually paint them in large format.
