ARCHIVES - Everett Herald Article on Bev Paulson

By day, Bev Paulson drew airplane parts for Boeing. She used pencil. Her work had an exacting quality, though the result was pretty much black and white. Well, more like gray and white.

In the evenings, Paulson took a watercolor class. The instructor turned her on to the power of color. Like a key unlocking a door, those classes evoked her childhood memories of the fields outside her home in Lockport, N.Y., and of summer vacations in the Canadian woods.

"I try to reflect in watercolors encounters with furry or feathered creatures, the love and exuberance of children, the wisdom and spirit of the aging, and majestic moods and textures of the outdoors," Paulson said.

That result today is Paulson's final products contain very little gray but lots and lots of color. The kind of vibrant color that caused art lovers to take notice.

By vote of the Stanwood-Camano Arts Guild membership, Paulson's watercolor "Ready to Unfurl" won this year's poster contest for Art by the Bay, Camano Island's arts festival. A member of the arts guild, Paulson has won many awards at shows such as the Stanwood-Camano Arts Guild Spring Art Show, the Stanwood Camano Fair and the Shoreline Arts Council Show. She has also participated in events such as Art by the Bay, the Stanwood-Camano Art Banner Project, the Roaming Artists Show and the Port Ludlow Art Walk.

Paulson actually started her drawing career with a pen, not a pencil. After moving west from New York, her employer arranged for her to illustrate a purchasing manual using a pen and ink drawing for the state of Oregon, and urged her to study commercial art at Oregon Technical Institute. She went on to work as a production illustrator at the Boeing plant in Renton, rendering pencil isometric drawings of clamps, pipes and wire bundles. The company offered an after-hours class, where painting instructor Chuck Webster introduced Paulson to watercolors.

Paulson, who married Bill Paulson in 1957, took time off from the work force to help raise the couple's two children. She returned to work and spent 11 years working for a picture framer and continued to paint. Bev and Bill moved from Kent to Camano Island in 2001.

Also honored at this year's Art by the Bay is Cassandra Olsen, who received the Stanwood-Camano Arts Guild scholarship. The guild awards a yearly scholarship to an outstanding art student attending Stanwood High School. Olsen has already received multiple awards and honors. Between 2005 and 2006, she earned seven different regional scholastic awards, and her paintings received ribbons in the 2005 and 2006 Art Bash. She also provided the winning T-shirt design for the 2006 Stanwood Camano Community Fair. During a high school class outing to lend a helping artistic hand to some fourth-grade students, Olsen discovered that she liked to teach.

"The kids got so excited when I showed them what they could do with a simple piece of charcoal," she said.

She plans on attending Everett Community College and Western Washington University to earn a teaching degree.