I am currently living in Gloucester and work in both watercolor and acrylic. While I have always been interested in painting, my creative outlet was always dance. I was a professional dancer for 25+ years in the Boston area, so between that and raising two children I never had the time to try my hand at painting. When Covid hit I decided to give painting a go. I am drawn to watercolor and wet-in-wet techniques where the interplay and flow of water and paint guide the process, creating a sense of movement in the landscapes.

I’ve taken  just 3 beginner classes at Slow River Studio in Nature sketching & beginner watercolor theory!  I’ve been an avid garden designer for over 30 yrs & work full time as a RN . Painting & sketching are my peaceful meditative moments I enjoy in my free time!

I'm still enchanted by the magic created with a few brushstrokes and some pigment even after painting with watercolors for decades. I only have partial control over the paint–and the final result–when I tilt the board and watch the colors mingle and merge on wet paper. That’s part of the delight of working in this fluid medium. I don’t have any formal training, but I do have great teachers, curiosity, persistence, creative joy, and students I get to share this knowledge with and learn from. That’s pretty cool.

I have always been interested in creating. When I retired as an assistant preschool teacher, I started to study watercolor with Betty Betty Lou Schlemm in Rockport. Now that I’ve moved to Beverly, I’m enjoying my classes at Slow River Studio.

My undergraduate degree is in Fine Art, and it was my good fortune to teach art on the Navajo Nation and later at a community college in Colorado in my earlier years. My interest in political affairs and in gainful employment led me to a graduate degree in Public Administration. After a 30+ year career in public service, I decided to re-start my creative life and enrolled in watercolor classes at Slow River Studio as the pandemic was winding down. I have taken several classes taught by Cara since then. This piece is based on several photos I took of poppy fields in Capestang, France last spring.

Student at Slow River in many mediums. I've just been painting in watercolour seriously for the past year and really enjoying it!

I have been practicing watercolor off and on for several years. Newly retired, I now have the time to focus and explore; to see how far and where this medium and others can take me.

I live in Ipswich with my husband and our dog Gunnar. We have three grown children and our first grandchild on the way! I have been taking classes at SRS going on three years and have loved every class and instructor there! Most recently I am concentrating on watercolors though I also paint in acrylic and oils.

I find joy in capturing human expression and emotion. My work centers on portraits and figures, and attempts to preserve fleeting moments in time. I was inspired by the freedom of this mode. I think she’s just turned to face us, and I tried to capture her youth and abandon at the end of the turn.

Monica grew up in Westchester County, New York and currently lives on Boston's coastal North Shore. Monica finds her greatest inspiration is the calming effect of nature and the way light bounces around creating a plethora of lines, shapes and colors in the shadows, highlights, and reflections.

Monica teaches at Slow River Studio and is a member of the Newburyport Art Association, Rocky Neck Art Colony, Ipswich Art Association, and the North Shore Art Association.

A few years ago, an impulse to fill a blank, dark wall in my home reignited my creative practice. I had recently started my clinical practice as a staff physician after years of intensive training, finally engaging in the work I had long envisioned. Yet I found myself in a loop of long identical days and this empty wall drew my attention. I filled it with a clumsily rendered six foot oil painting of voluminous clouds illuminated post sunset to bring a sense of light back into my space.

What started as an instinctive act developed into a disciplined practice, mirroring the same curiosity and rigor I bring to medicine, through books, lessons, and studies. My work is representational with a layer of surreal elements to reflect dualities I experience: structure and spontaneity, logic and intuition, the known and the unknown.

I am a vascular and interventional neurologist by profession and artist by passion, navigating the space where clinical expertise and creative expression meet. For me, both medicine and art are powerful acts of witnessing. This series of watercolor paintings of boats were captured by direct observations while kayaking in Newport Harbor, RI, with studies performed on site and final works completed in studio.

I am a novice painter working to develop mastery of watercolor. I am especially interested in animal portraits and landscapes.

In the last 5 years I have gotten back into watercolor painting after raising my family. I like to think of myself as a traditional watercolorist but have been trying to branch out of my comfort zone. 

My first submission is of a barn which best reflects my style of painting. 

My second submission is of the birch trees in the woods which I think has given me a more painterly look to my artwork. 

The third is flowers from my garden. I really enjoy sitting in my garden and painting whenever piques my interest.

Hi, I’m Meghan! I have been taking classes at Slow River for 3 years off and on. I love the ethereal feel watercolors offer and the delicate way they capture emotions. Women and other cultures inspire my work!

I've always loved color ; whether it's the gold and crimson of beets on display at the grocery store, the warm browns and greens of a desolate island in a sea of blue, or the myriad of greys in the swirl of clouds, as a storm approaches a red barn, that waits in silently in a field of Autumn grass- they all delight me. They bring me joy.