“What began as a simple email turned into a journey of creativity, courage, and connection,” says Wisconsin watercolorist Caitlin Leline Hatch. It certainly did—but she almost missed it.

Hatch says she considered deleting the email she found in her inbox five months ago, but when she saw that it was from someone connected with Coors Banquet and Wrangler, she opened it. The senders said they were looking for an artist to create a series of original, Western-inspired prints and that they immediately thought of her, mentioning that the tone, texture, and spirit of her paintings reflect the storytelling and sense of American heritage they wanted to capture.

 

 

The vision the folks at Coors Banquet and Wrangler had was to celebrate a historic collaboration by merging art, heritage, and craftsmanship. “I knew it was a perfect fit; their story and aesthetic aligned so naturally with how I approach painting,” Hatch says. And, of course, she signed on for the project.

That legendary collaboration, which launched in October, involves a clothing line inspired by Western heritage that features beer-washed denim and other Western-style apparel, including shirts, jeans, vests, t-shirts, jackets, and caps. Hatch’s assignment was to create five original paintings, each featuring one of the co-branded garments; but there was a twist.

“They wanted me to paint using beer as my medium instead of water,” Hatch says. “That night, I stayed up experimenting, discovering that, while beer behaves a lot like watercolor, it dries slower and becomes sticky, forcing me to paint more intentionally and intuitively. I painted with Coors Banquet Beer, mixing it into my palette the way I normally would with water.”

 

 

Beer, Hatch says, has a warm amber note that gives everything a golden undertone, especially in the lighter washes, and brings with it a richness and authenticity. “The concept was thoughtfully cohesive, using the very product being celebrated as the medium created a direct connection between the artwork and the brand’s story,” she says.

At one point during the process, Hatch was invited to film a video ad for the campaign in the historic stockyards in Fort Worth, Texas. “Painting under a single light in a dark arena, on a vertical easel, with a fog machine swirling around me was unlike anything I’d ever done,” she says. “Yet it was magical. The team was kind, the energy electric, and the experience unforgettable.”

 

 

Hatch completed the paintings, with each one highlighting a different piece from the Coors x Wrangler collection. Each painting was then printed as a limited edition of 40 numbered giclee prints, and when they were released, they almost immediately sold out. One of her paintings was also transformed into a billboard above Madison Square Garden in New York City, and she and her 12-year-old daughter flew there to see it in person. “It felt like a full-circle moment I’ll never forget,” she says.

 

 

Hatch and her husband Andy live and work on a century-old dairy farm in Wisconsin’s Driftless Region. The milk from their grass-fed cows flows directly to their onsite creamery and is turned into two traditional, award-winning raw milk cheeses: Pleasant Ridge Reserve and Rush Creek Reserve.

Hatch, who will lead an art retreat in Portugal next February, is a signature member of Women in Watercolor and the Northwest Watercolor Society. She’s also a member of Cowgirl Artists of America and an associate member of the National Watercolor Society, the Transparent Watercolor Society of America, the American Watercolor Society, and the American Impressionist Society. Her many awards include this year’s Marty McManamon Memorial Award at the Transparent Watercolor Society of America’s 49th annual exhibition and the Holbein Arist Material Award at the Northwest Watercolor Society Waterworks Exhibition.