Colors and Smiles

I was 13 when I sat in the backyard studio of my mentor, Ron Maffett, holding my first nice brush and a tin of watercolors before me. 

Ron Maffett, born in Jefferson, Georga, found his calling in watercolors when his mother gave him a tin box of hard watercolor paints in 1948 when he was ten years old. His mother wanted her son to walk the same path in life as an artist. She encouraged him to paint what interested him, even if it differed from her subject and style—which for her was nature, birds, and flowers, and at the time, for Ron, was cowboys and Native Americans. She also pushed him to learn from others, sending him to a woman in town—Elizabeth Smith, who was also a painter. 

His mother and Elizabeth Smith became his main early influences as there were no art programs in his schools growing up. His only other influences came from church and bible school, which was the one place that did teach some art. The stained-glass depictions of Bible stories served as influential references for his work. 

Ron continued his journey as an artist as one of the early goers to the Atlanta School of Art. Here, he didn’t just focus on painting and watercolor but any art that spoke to him. One form, in particular, was life drawing. This became pivotal in shaping his love for nature and painting anything around him that he found beautiful, fascinating, or simply something worth capturing. However, he always stuck close to watercolor. Even when drawing or sketching Ron is always thinking about paint and what colors would work well for the drawing. 

His work is influenced by the world around him. Anything he sees could potentially be a painting. For Ron, it’s all about finding that one thing that speaks to you and capturing its form. The form is critical to Ron’s work as he states, “Shape is everything; that’s where all of it begins.” Capturing the shape is the first step for him, drawing sketches over and over again until he finds the right one to paint. And sometimes, even then, the painting might not work out. However, experimentation is essential to Ron, so these ideation sketches and paintings are vital to his creative process. 

Ron now often works in series, creating multiple paintings—sometimes up to four or five—of the same subject or theme, frequently featuring nature and the surrounding mountains where he currently lives in Black Mountain, North Carolina. This allows him to fully explore a topic of his current interest before moving on to a new subject. 

To Ron, the biggest challenge is “the blank page.” But he likes to remain optimistic about creative blocks and says, “Give it time, things will generally come around.” Every time he starts painting, he aims to push himself out of his comfort zone and will try and try again until the painting works. 

Ron currently has a studio at The Red House Gallery and Studios, also in Black Mountain, where he’s been a member for over 20 years. His focus now and always has been on making people smile. His current works display a wide range of subject matters, from dense forests to an American flag blowing in the wind with a banana peel on top. Although many of his paintings do carry a message, some do not. But they all highlight color and the beauty of color in our daily lives. He hopes that, above all, his work will be appreciated by its viewers and, most importantly, it will make them smile.