OC Mag 01-22

| ARTIST
TEXT BY RYLAN HOWE
PHOTOS BY RYLAN HOWE, SUBMITTED
Water
World
Judy Thompson creates
vivid watercolor art
Watercolors are fluid by
nature. The resulting
works of art contain
an ethereal quality difficult to match
with other mediums.
As an artist it helps to go with the
flow and Orange City’s Judy Thompson
has done exactly that as she’s navigated
life’s path toward the pursuit of
professional art.
Beginnings
“As a kid, I loved to read and I was
captivated by the drawings and illustrations.
It amazed me that someone
could make a story come alive
by creating pictures,” Thompson
said. “I particularly liked pen and
ink drawings and was fascinated that
you could draw just about anything by
using lines. I was hooked and spent
countless hours drawing.”
Growing up in a western suburb
of Chicago, Thompson attended a
large high school with an extensive
art program and she enrolled in very
single one of them, even securing an
Judy Thompson’s watercolor works of art grace the walls of not only her Orange City home, but
several N’West Iowa hospitals and clinics, numerous art galleries, and even the book covers for the
Laura Ingalls Wilder Pioneer Girl project by the South Dakota Historical Society Press.
art scholarship.
Her artistic endeavors however
would end up taking a bit of a pause
as life took her in other directions.
“We’ve all heard the ‘starving artist’
motif and my parents encouraged me
to go a different direction so I started
thinking of art more as a hobby than
a career,” Thompson said. “But I think
if you’re creative it’s hard to leave it
completely. There always seems to be
ways to come back and explore it a
SPRING 2022 | OC MAGAZINE 17