Watercolor Maps
Welcome to the captivating world of my watercolor maps! Through my artwork, I explore the significance of place and its profound influence on our lives. Maps have a way of capturing the essence of a location, from bustling cities to quaint small towns and even the mysteries of the unknown. Browse through my collection and discover the allure of these watercolor maps. They are not just artworks; they are windows into the tapestry of our diverse world. Join me in celebrating the power of place, as we unlock the stories that lie within the contours of each map.
Shop Maps
Originals and prints for sale in the Stargirl Store!
Custom Maps
I do custom maps. Let’s chat!
Real Places: Map Series
Twin Cities Map
watercolor ↵ gouache ↵ quill ↵ marker ↵ google maps
If you live here, you’re lucky enough to be by so much water this far from the ocean. I wanted to capture both downtowns as well as the way that water connects us all and is dotted all over our beautiful Twin Cities.
Now and Then: A Mapping Project
humans ↵ watercolor ↵ pen ↵ typewriter ↵ scanner ↵ Adobe Photoshop
These prints are from a section of a larger public arts sailboat sculpture on display outside Detroit Lakes City Liquor Store.
My goal with the sailboat project was to create two maps, one showing the now of Detroit Lakes and the other showing the then. I wanted to include lots of facts and figures on the sails as well as compare and contrast sections. But as I began my interviews with local residents and research librarians at the Becker County Museum, I quickly discovered that my goal was impossible because the city holds too much history, stories, people, organizations, and businesses to ever fit on one artwork.
Therefore, these maps are not meant to be an exhaustive source or even summery of information about Detroit Lakes. Instead, the project morphed into a series of hat tips, winks, and nods toward the stories I learned about the city. The new goal became to stir questions within the viewer and to invite curiosity about a town you thought you knew or you are just discovering for the first time.
I created these prints as a way for people who connected with the larger artwork to take a bit of it home with them.
Whereabouts: Map Series
watercolor ↵ gouache ↵ quill ↵ marker
Whereabouts are you from?
City
The places we reside inform our worldview. It’s impossible for place not to. It’s where we work, where we play, the people we spend time with/live near, the food we eat, the distance we have to travel to get the things we need, and the tension of what is and is not available. What is allowed and what is not allowed. And all of this, all of these experiences, is how place informs what feels true or not true to us.
Small Town
Our place often feels the most true or right. We value the familiar and the known, especially in times of hardship and stress. It’s tempting to view a place different from what we are familiar with as OTHER, often making judgments on the people who live there and the way they go about their lives.
But no matter where you call home and where you consider to be OTHER, we are more similar than different. We all have to go to a store/market/farm to buy food. We need fuel. We visit the people we love. We drive/ride/walk on a main street.
Unknown
We’re drawn to the bodies of water near us. We worship somewhere. We all have a secret place we like to go when we want to be alone. Should it matter if, for one person, it’s a country field and for another, it’s a city beach or an island in the middle of a river on an unknown planet?
So, let’s be curious about the things that feel different to us. Where is your favorite bookstore? Playground? Corner store? Bus stop?
Dream: Map Series
canvas ↵ watercolor ↵ markers ↵ typewriter ↵ imagination ↵
Imagine you are in the library in Venice in the third Indiana Jones movie with Harrison Ford and Sean Connery! Further, imagine that you are NOT, in fact, on the quest for the Holy Grail or being hunted by a secret society who has sworn to protect it; therefore, you can just chill and look around.
THESE MAPS are what I imagine you would find in that library, in some dusty corner, in a large, hand written book from a forgotten time. Perhaps these are the notes of an explorer or the maps of a lost civilization? Whatever this map is of, you want to know more.
These maps are my fiction-writing brain barging into my visual art zone. I hope they spark your imagination in the same way they spark mine.