Kathryn Ann Mancuso

Hometown: Central, Louisiana

Age: 25

Artistry: Fine art watercolor and acrylic painting

Online: kathrynannart.com, @kathrynann.art on Instagram

A beginner’s medium, some say, until they fully explore the wildly unforgiving, often intimidating mess that can appear when watercolor lands on paper. If specificity is any sort of aim, then controlling such flows of pigment is akin to steering the direction of a river. And in Louisiana, we all know how difficult that can be.

For Kathryn Ann Mancuso, who holds an MBA in Business from Southeastern but decided in 2020 to launch an LLC to make landscape and nature paintings full-time, the experience of navigating these unpredictable waters mirrors the journey of the common creative.

“With watercolor, you have to let go and not worry so much,” Mancuso says. “And when you truly do that, you’ll reach the next level of your art.”

Inspired by the faces of the Bible-based drama The Chosen, Mancuso recently painted her own epic version of the Last Supper, which, like her Sacred Heart paintings, is an act of expressing her faith through art. But it is her love of nature and her Louisiana home that consistently brings her back to her brushes every day.

She first learned to paint as a child from a neighbor who gave her free lessons on weekends. She uses colors in a hazy, muted way but with a lot of detail. Her evocative scenes always use pops of color, though, because she can’t help herself. The Central native is a recovering perfectionist, she admits with a laugh.

“I have to tell myself to slow down and not put pressure on myself,” Mancuso says. “The creativity can fade away when I’m trying to make something look too perfect.”

Blushing roseate spoonbills, their wings like canopies open to the wind, and intense-eyed, emerald-crested wood ducks look poised to fly off the page in her “Wings of Louisiana” series. She trades in watercolor for acrylic when painting on hunks of cypress.

Her prints are available from Local Supply at Electric Depot in Baton Rouge, and the artist will show her work at the Three Rivers Art Festival in Covington from November 9 to 10.

“It doesn’t matter what you majored in or what life looks like, if you want to create, you can do it,” she says. “You’ll get out of it what you put in, but you have to practice to add to your creative spark. It doesn’t just happen.”