By Sue Bergstrom for Valdez City News –
You’ve probably seen Raeann Krugger around town, serving you food in a restaurant or at winter events in Thompson Pass. You may know her from the local artists’ community. She’s spent eleven winters in Valdez and worked as a server in many local establishments as well as being an active snow-boarder and ice climber. She says she’s met a lot of the community through these jobs and they have allowed her the freedom to paint and play during the day. Raeann moved to Valdez after high school in 1994, learned how to snowboard and was hooked. She moved away after four years and spent the next eleven traveling the world with her snowboard before she eventually moved back to Valdez full-time.
“Valdez is one of the most amazing places to snowboard with an awesome little community and endless beauty to paint. It’s my happy place. ”
Raeann realized she could draw well when her family got very excited over a portrait she did in colored pencils while visiting her uncle’s hunting camp when she was ten. In high school she attended a commercial art school for most of the day, learning how to use values and hues. She says her teacher there had an incredible skill at blending and creating color and had wonderful basic drawing skills; that she would not know what to do now if not for him. She also attended art school for a year while healing from a snowboarding injury before going back to the mountains. There her professor and teacher of oil painting took her under his wing and encouraged her to keep painting.
|
|
But Raeann stopped painting for about nine years because she could find no motivation or inspiration. When she moved back to Valdez she found inspiration everywhere and the motivation came back. She opened an art studio and started an art co-op, which she ran until she bought what she describes as, “the dreamiest piece of property and the cutest little cabin, where I created the most ‘zenful’ art studio an artist could ever imagine. It is my slice of heaven where I feel more creative and motivated than I’ve ever felt.”
Raeann works in oil, pastel (which is an oil chalk), colored pencil and water color. Her years of travel as well as her love of Valdez are reflected in her work. It includes landscapes, seascapes, plants and wildlife as well as portraits. Her work can be seen at Off the Hook or the Tsaina Lodge as well as facebook.com/raeanntheartist. She is in the process of building a personal web site.
Click on one of the tiles below to view a slideshow of some of Raeann’s works:
