Cecily Willis

I grew up in the Fairfax/Hollywood area of Los Angeles, and later lived in South Pasadena before I came to the Santa Clarita Valley. I received my MFA in Painting from the Otis Art Institute. I have been a professional artist for over 40 years in the fields of textile design, fashion illustration, and newspaper and corporate graphic design. I am proud to say that I was an advertising artist for the Los Angeles Times during that newspaper's heyday.

I am now retired, living in Newhall, California and devoting all of my free time to painting.

I am very grateful for my commercial art background. I hope that I convery the same kind of commitment, devotion and integrity in my own personal work that I gave to my commerical art clients.

I love watercolor—it's a partnership with a Higher Power. I take care of the layout, the details and the drawing, and H.P. handles the washes, the drips and the drabs, and the running colors. I love the "mistakes". I love the great adverture of visualizing what you would like a painting to be, and then have it turn out entirely different from what you imagined. That is the great fun of painting for me.

Degas said that "Art is not what you see, but what you make others see".— I love when people relate to my art—when  they see the same things that I see or something entirely different—I love that I am a citizen of this world—-that I am not "terminally unique"—

I consider my paintings a success when they can erase the boundaries that separate me from my fellow man.