Therese Fowler-Bailey lived in the small town of Porterville, near Sequoia National Park, for the first 40 years of her life. For the last 18, she has lived in Susanville with her husband, Kenneth.
Her mother encouraged Fowler-Bailey and her siblings to explore the worlds of art and nature, and told Therese to “climb to the top of trees” so she could see the forest from a different perspective. Fowler-Bailey’s experience of seeking grand viewpoints would be manifest later in her art.
She always possessed, in her words, “God-given talent.” She was adept at informal drawing and painting, which led to her painting murals on walls and ceilings in private homes in the San Joaquin Valley. In 1992, she took a watercolor class at Porterville Community College. This sparked her interest in creative art. She proceeded to take workshops from top artists, including Jane Burnham, Robbie Laird, Barbara Nechis, Donna Watson, Stephen Quiller, Dan Burt, Ratindra Das, Steve Rogers, Tom Fong, Arne Westerman, Chris Van Winkle, and Robert Burridge, among others. Her foremost mentor was Robbie Laird.
Fowler-Bailey enjoys working mostly in watercolor and gouache and occasionally in acrylics. She employs a “big brush” in creating mainly large paintings, measured more in feet than in inches. They feature rich blends of color, vibrancy, and contrasts that seek to engage and excite viewers. Her subject matter is varied, with many paintings completed on location, such as Hawaii, Mexican beaches, Italy (including Tuscany, Florence, and the Chianti and Cinque Terre regions), the Mediterranean coasts of Greece, Istanbul, and Turkey, the Inland Passage to Alaska, and up and down California. She usually completes one to two paintings a week.
Fowler-Bailey’s work has received recognition in juried competitions, including three best-of-show awards, several first-place ribbons, and three people’s choice awards. Her art is exhibited in galleries throughout California, including Good Vibrations Gallery (Lake Almanor), Artisan Coffee (Susanville), The Backroom Gallery (Chester), Burford’s Frames and Fine Art Gallery (Porterville), Exeter Courthouse Gallery (Exeter), and Great Full Gardens (restaurant, Reno).
Beyond her art, Therese and Kenneth Fowler-Bailey have long been active anglers, in her words, “fishing everywhere.” And for several years, “that’s all we did.” One of their favorite waters was the Columbia River, where they fished for sturgeon. And of course, Lake Almanor and Eagle Lake, both near Susanville. With her art and work with her husband’s contracting business requiring more and more time, the two fish far less these days.
If the artwork featured here looks familiar, that’s because the image is drawn from a film poster for A River Runs Through It. Fowler-Bailey has applied her own distinctive colorations to this image and has created several different renditions of it. Her work can be viewed at http://www.tfbailey.com.
