There’s no missing the confidence in Bev Jozwiak’s canvases.

“I lay it on pretty thick,” the west Vancouver artist said with a chuckle. “I don’t have the patience for anything else. A lot of watercolor artists start light and build up, layer by layer, but I just want to get it down.”

A fellow painting instructor recently told Jozwiak, “You have the most confident brushstrokes I’ve ever seen.”

That comment provided her the title for a new how-to book for aspiring painters.

Jozwiak will sign copies of “Confident Brushstrokes” and greet local art lovers from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday during the opening of her solo exhibition at Vancouver’s Aurora Gallery, 1004 Main St. It’s part of downtown’s monthly First Friday Art Walk. The exhibit stays up all month.

“Confident Brushstrokes” is a beginner-friendly guide to Jozwiak’s approach to painting. Its 164 pages include more than 150 of her pieces, along with step-by-step guides to how she created them.

Jozwiak grew up in Vancouver in a family of casual artists. Her grandmother always provided paper and pens and drew right alongside her. But somehow their laid-back amusement became her lifelong passion.

“I don’t know why. I think I just inherited the gene,” she said. “It’s always been in me.”

But after majoring in fine arts and minoring in art history at Western Washington University, Jozwiak returned to Vancouver and fell into factory work.

“I packed potato chips at Frito-Lay for 18 years,” she said. “At 35, I had a midlife crisis. Art was what I always wanted to do, and I realized I was just going crazy.”

Jozwiak’s husband encouraged her to stop packing chips and start painting. She took a watercolor class that inspired her to learn proper technique — but also to break past the standard softness and lightness of watercolors and go for the thicker, richer, bolder style that’s become her signature.

“Representational impressionism” is what Jozwiak calls her approach, which conveys pleasingly familiar subjects — animals, birds, beachgoers, ballet dancers — through deep colors and chunky shapes.

While she usually sticks with watercolors, she said, acrylic painting is even handier for Jozwiak’s thick, bold approach. One acrylic piece in her Aurora Gallery show is a 5-foot-square triptych, she said.

“Sometimes I like to paint really big, and acrylic is great for that,” she said.

Motion and emotion are what Jozwiak is always trying to capture in her canvases, she said.

“I’m an emotional painter,” she said. “I turn on my music full blast and paint almost every day.”

Music like what? “Everything from Pink to Pink Floyd,” she said. “I love all kinds of music.”

Jozwiak said she is a lifelong goal-setter and that’s probably the key to her success. Her first goals were showing and selling locally. Then she got more ambitious, aiming for busy galleries on the Oregon Coast and elsewhere. Eventually she started fielding invitations to show, write and teach everywhere from China to Bulgaria to Italy.

“I am now a signature member of every watercolor society in the U.S. Getting your American Watercolor Society signature is like earning your Ph.D. Not an easy task,” she said. “That was my goal.”

Having achieved many of her goals and traveled extensively for years, Jozwiak said she’s starting to tire of that art-rock-star lifestyle. She’s 69 years old and wants to spend more time simply working in her west Vancouver studio, she said.

The only thing left is to keep improving as a painter, she said.

“I think having a passion like this is what keeps me young,” she said. “You keep pushing for the next level. The more you paint, the better you get.”

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