Alan Shuptrine
Lookout Mountain watercolor artist and gallery owner Alan Shuptrine will continue a lifelong study of the special connection between Appalachia and the British Isles as an artist in residence at a Scottish castle in summer 2025.
“It’s a huge honor to be an artist in residence anywhere,” Mr. Shuptrine said. He will do his part to immerse guests of the Skibo Castle in the arts, with exhibitions and plein air workshops at the 8,000-acre grounds in the Scottish Highlands.
The property, dating from 1211, has golf courses, equestrian trails, gardens and ponds with lily pads, he said.
“The subject matter is just unlimited,” he said. “I just can’t wait to get over there and be inspired.”
Mr. Shuptrine said he will practice the artisan’s code with the people he meets, which is to pass on secrets and techniques.
“It gives me great satisfaction to teach others the tradition of realism and how to achieve that in watercolor,” Mr. Shuptrine said. “The worst thing you can do is take that to your grave.”
He learned realist watercolor from his father, Hubert Shuptrine, with synchronous inspiration from American realism standard Andrew Wyeth. Hubert Shuptrine’s work is laid out in the book "Jericho: The South Beheld,” with text by “Deliverance” author James Dickey.
Mr. Shuptrine’s exploration of the British Isles will always point back home to the southern U.S., where Scottish, Irish, English and Welsh traditions and geography share blood and geology.
Scotland’s green hills contain serpentine, a lichen-colored streaky gemstone found throughout the British Isles and stretching under the ocean to the Appalachian Mountains. Mr. Shuptrine’s 2017-2019 exhibit at the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville, “Appalachian Watercolors of the Serpentine Chain,” centered on this through line.
These works were compiled in a 2020 book, “I Come From a Place.” Appalachia, Scotland and Ireland are called home by someone who has lived there, or by someone who has “an odd sense that we’ve been there before,” Mr. Shuptrine said. The book won the Gold Medal Award for Best Regional Non-Fiction from the Independent Publishers Book Awards.
Chattanoogan.com caught up with Mr. Shuptrine this week en route to Ireland, where he planned to meet a fifth-generation maker of Irish whiskey.
“I’d like to paint this Irishman at his craft,” Mr. Shuptrine said. This year he will track down the foundations of a few more traditions brought to Appalachia: fiddle tunes, quilt-making patterns, and folklore.
Painting live people with tactile materials keeps him close to realism. He travels to call on clients in person, sell in person, and show in person.
He said only 20 percent of his sales are online sales, but social media has been a great marketing tool. His work has been physically displayed in more than 60 exhibitions and permanent collections across the South. It’s always an honor to have work displayed in a gallery, he said.
His own popular gallery, Shuptrine’s Gallery on Broad Street, receives locals and tourists and promotes the careers of more than 40 artists all over the world.
“We’re really lucky,” he said. “There are fewer and fewer galleries these days that are brick and mortar.” He said that fifth- and sixth-generation galleries in New York City are closing after 130 years in business.
Clients buy what they know and what makes them feel at home, paintings of places where they grew up or traveled, the talented artist said.
“It’s kind of a chronicling of a moment in your life,” he said. “There’s nothing more truthful than that.”
“We’re all searching for truth in our lives,” Mr. Shuptrine said.
Mr. Shuptrine began pursuing painting full time after a 2010 exhibit in Vero Beach, Fla., alongside his father and Mr. Wyeth, his “pinch me moment,” he said.
“It was an opportunity to exhibit my works with my two childhood heroes,” he said. His father would tell him, “Son, don’t ever paint on the surface level. Capture the soul of something.”
Upcoming Workshops:
“I love to teach all levels,” Mr. Shuptrine said. “I give 150 percent.” He prioritizes making his students at ease.
“I, too, am very vulnerable and have a lot of weaknesses,” he said.
Mr. Shuptrine described his favorite technique, dry brush watercolor: Use mostly pigment, squeeze almost all water out of the brush, a Kolynski sable brush. Use a “scumbling motion” to touch the highest points of texture on watercolor paper, then darken colors by applying more pressure or hovering.
Sept. 12: Fall Foliage in Watercolor: A Beginner's Class with Alan Shuptrine at the Lookout Mountain Club
Oct. 17: One-man show at the Grand Bohemian Gallery in Mountain Brook, Ala.
Nov. 1-2: Master Artist Workshop in Floral Landscape watercolor at the Huntsville Museum of Art
Mr. Shuptrine will return to Italy’s Florence Academy of Art this year as an encore instructor. In 2022, he exhibited gilded works and taught a master course on water gilding there as an artist in residence.
Watercolor by Alan Shuptrine