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Beavercreek artist’s works on display in Ohio, Ind.

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3:15 PM Thursday, June 23, 2011

Mary-Anna Fricano Welch has a “black thumb” and “can’t grow anything but weeds,” she says, but she still has a beautiful garden.

Instead of planting flowers, the Beavercreek artist paints them.

With bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art education from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, she taught art in Illinois before meeting her husband, Gary.

While stationed at Chanute Air Force Base in Illinois, he promised that, if she would marry him, she’d “see the world.”

“The opposite proved true, I lived in the Midwest while he was off serving his country in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East,” said Welsh, who now lives in Beavercreek with her husband and their daughter, Stephanie, a junior at Beavercreek High School.

Welch, whose water colors most often feature flowers, fruit, vegetables or children’s art, began drawing as a child.

“My earliest influence was my grandfather, who drew all of the time and encouraged my pursuits. Several prominent artists influenced me,” she said.

“Both Georgia O’Keefe and Glenn Bradshaw showed me how to take an ordinary object and make it a work of art,” said Welch, who, after exploring different media and techniques, chose to concentrate on water media, because “the freshness and luminescence of the medium fascinated me.”

She has been commissioned to paint murals in every state she’s lived in and her most recent mural was dedicated June 5 in the nursery of her church, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church on Woodman Drive in Dayton.

“The parish action team of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church was mentioning redecorating the nursery/preschool in the community room and I was asked if I painted murals. We discussed several themes and came up with the creation story and titled the mural, ‘Night and Day in the Garden of Eden,’ ” she said.

“One side of the floor-to-ceiling mural is the ‘Day’ which has Adam and Eve of course, plus a pond, garden and lots of daytime-loving animals. The ‘Night’ side features St. Mark’s mascot, the lion, sleeping, plus a host of nocturnal animals.”

The 125 hours spent on the four-wall mural were “a labor of love” for Welsh, who is “always on the look out to paint another mural.”

Work by Welch, a member of the Dayton Visual Arts Center and the Western Ohio Watercolor Society, is currently on display at Cecelia’s Village in Fairborn, Tri-State Artisans in Batesville, Ind., and My Favorite Muffin in the Kettering Tower in Dayton.

For more information, visit www.maryanna welch.com.

Contact this columnist at dsb@donet.com.

HEREABOUTS DIANA BLOWERS

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