Ged Mitchell didn’t take the normal route to an art career; he dropped out of school at age 15, having never sat for an exam, and took a job as a photographer’s assistant. Though short lived, the job fueled an interest in photography, which informs the composition and use of light in his beautiful watercolor paintings. Mitchell took up watercolor painting as a hobby in 1979, but was quickly consumed by his passion for the work and began to show his paintings at local fairs and craft shows. In 1992, he opened his own art gallery, which he ran for 6 years before going back to painting full time, when the work of managing the day-to-day business of the gallery began to take over too much of his painting time.

Mitchell conjures up the landscapes in his paintings from photos, sketches, and his imagination, finding that it is important to depict a place that is beautiful, but which also contains an element of mystery. These landscapes, at once familiar and unfamiliar, are meant to challenge the viewer, teasing him or her on to look deeper and delve further into the work. Mitchell creates this thought-provoking final product by beginning with a few heavy washes of color while he formulates the nascent work. From there, he begins to create areas of interest, building up color and detail and organizing the focal points of the painting. The result is an artwork that intrigues and captivates.