Painting is my way of appreciating and understanding the world around me. The paintings of our polar ice are expressions of a beautiful, fascinating, life-giving, and ever-changing substance. They are portraits of chapters in the life of water.
—April Waters
April Waters
The rivers, creeks, and coast of Oregon have long been the primary subject of Waters’ paintings. Environmental concerns, especially those regarding our wetlands, oceans, flooding, and indigenous water rights, have provided important influences on her work.
Waters paintings are in the collections of the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Oregon State University, Western Oregon University, Mount Angel Library, The Edward Allworth Veterans Home, the State of Oregon and in many other private and corporate collections. She has a Bachelor of Fine Art from University of Colorado, Boulder and worked for many years as a Registered Nurse. Her works are also in the collections of places of healing including Salem Hospital, Hope Orthopedic Clinic, Slocum Orthopedic in Eugene, the PeaceHealth Medical Center in Springfield and Adventist Memorial Hospital in Portland.
In 2018 She was a National Science Foundation grantee for the Antarctic Artist and Writers Program. The journey to the Antarctic Peninsula resulted in the exhibition “Water- Ice-Sky”, Antarctica, at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art in 2023 and at the Giustina Gallery of Oregon State University in 2023.
Her National Park Artist Residency at the Crater Lake Centennial Celebration resulted in an exhibition at the Schneider Museum of Art in Ashland, Oregon. The painting Wizard Island, Crater Lake was exhibited at the American Embassy in Kyrgyzstan through the US State Department's Arts in Embassies Program. In 2022 she was an Artist in Residence at the Ilulissat Art Museum in Greenland.
Her series of large scale portraits of Dr. Helen Caldicott, Dr. Wangari Maathai, Dr. Vandana Shiva and Maude Barlow represent women who are working, or who have worked, to protect the oceans, rivers and watersheds of the world.
The paintings have been exhibited at several conferences regarding women/and or the environment including ‘Women Reshaping the World’ sponsored by Living Futures, in Portland, OR.
