Alamedia

Color by Design

 Watercolor by Beth Bourland

 
 


















    With her paints and canvas in hand, Beth Bourland, 45, stopped in her tracks at the  corner of Walnut Street and San Jose Avenue. “I felt the sensation of the sun,” she recalls, “and was struck by these blocks of color that seemed to march down the street.” She set up her watercolors and, about three hours later, finished Alameda Corner. “I saw the light hitting the facade of those houses, and the color in the sun and shadows attracted me,” she says. Bourland’s proclivity for drawing comes from her father, who worked as a draftsman and a carpenter; he designed and built the family residence and drew countless pictures of buildings. Bourland illustrates custom home drawings and also works at the San Francisco Chronicle as a page designer and copy editor. She finds herself at home in Alameda, where she has lived for four years, because it so closely resembles her hometown of Whitmore Lake, Mich. “I could paint for a lifetime on one square block of Alameda,” she says. “I like the ordinary slice of life, the neighborhoods where people live simply.” See more of Bourland’s take on life at www.bourlandstudio.com.