Looking for more space to spread out and work on a project? Or maybe you want to work amongst other artists to feel inspired and get some helpful feedback on your work. Join Sue Casey on Wednesdays, starting November 29, any time between 9am-12pm, for Open Studio. Please pay $10 cash at the door. Bring all supplies you need to use, NRAS has easels available. 

No registration, drop in only, cash or check.

It’s not uncommon now for artist exhibit entries to be online. Learn to photograph your piece for online entries to achieve the most “real-life” likeness. The class will also go over shipping, inventory organization and presenting your work. 

Free coffee and donuts to be provided by SlackTide Coffee Roasters.

Register for the full series of "Best Practices: Supporting a Life in the Arts" and save $20. Preregistration is highly encouraged but walk-ins are welcome. North River Arts is pleased to introduce this important series of business skill-building discussions for artists. This information is usually hard to find, but NRAS is committed to supporting artists in all aspects of a life in the arts. Making art is just the beginning! Free coffee and donuts to be provided by SlackTide Coffee Roasters.

After Your Art is Created: Photographing, Shipping, Inventory, Presentation
with Liz Haywood-Sullivan
Sunday January 14, 1:00-3:30pm
It’s not uncommon now for artist exhibit entries to be online. Learn to photograph your piece for online entries to achieve the most “real-life” likeness. The class will also go over shipping, inventory organization and presenting your work. 

Social Media and Advertising Your Art with Maryann Gibbons and Julia Driscoll
Sunday January 28, 1:00-3:30pm
Maryann and Julia will guide you through the world of social media strategy, content creation and getting your art online. They will cover a wide range of topics from leveraging social media for art promotion and growth to cost-effective strategies and time management. 

Pricing Your Art and Goal Setting with Kate Anderson and Liz Haywood-Sullivan
Sunday February 11, 1:00-3:30pm
Pricing your own artwork is probably the most anxiety inducing aspect of being an artist. What is your art worth? Where do you start? What if you overprice, or under price? Yikes! Bring your questions and concerns to this candid discussion of artwork pricing and goal setting strategy.

Strategies for Teaching with Maureen Smith
Sunday February 25, 1:00-3:30pm
Interested in teaching? Teaching is great way to improve your craft, create a name for yourself in the local community and earn money at the same time. Maureen has an expansive background in teaching teachers! She will lead you through the ins and outs of getting started.

Water soluble oil paints act and look the same as traditional oils. They are used without solvents, and clean up with soap and water. In the workshop I will demonstrate different techniques including wet into wet, glazing, impasto. This is a workshop for people who are already familiar with using traditional oils or acrylics and who would like to explore the use of more ecologically friendly materials for creating art. Participants are encouraged to experiment. 

About the Instructor: Joan Appel

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, DeCordova Museum, Paier College of Art and Lesley University.  At Lesley she earned a Master's degree in Arts Administration. This enabled her to be hired as Development Manager at the South Shore Art Center in Cohasset, MA, and to later become Acting Director there.  

Oil painting and monotype printmaking are her primary forms of artistic expression. Among other prizes, her art won Best in Show at the Cape Cod Art Center and the Cape Cod Museum of Art. Story-telling and commentary on ecological issues are evident in much of her work, sometimes stated with wry humor, often in mixed media. Her monotypes are created without a press in her Marshfield MA studio. These abstract pieces have been included in such international exhibits as at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and the Newport, RI Museum of Art.

Joan is a member of the National Association of Women Artists Massachusetts chapter, the American Impressionist Society and the Boston Printmakers.

Materials list for participants

• Water soluble oil paints, personal choice of colors warm and cool (available online or at Michael’s stores)
• 2 or 3 canvas or panels no larger than 9” x 12”
• rags
• palette (paper, glass, as preferred personally)
• brushes
• palette knives
• container for water
• ivory soap bar
• photos or magazine images for reference in creating a painting

Maryann and Julia will guide you through the world of social media strategy, content creation and getting your art online. They will cover a wide range of topics from leveraging social media for art promotion and growth to cost-effective strategies and time management. 

Free coffee and donuts to be provided by SlackTide Coffee Roasters.

This 1-day workshop is a fun and playful class to loosen up and create an abstract portrait of your pet, or any animal, into a colorful and patterned version using simple paint and collage techniques. Students will learn how to use organic shapes and acrylic paints to create their pet portrait in an intuitive way.

This workshop is for beginners and seasoned artists. It is a non intimidating way for a beginner to gain confidence and have fun while learning new techniques. For the seasoned artist, it is a way to play and use intuition without pressure of "hard rules."  

About the Instructor: Tracy Allegro

Tracy is a contemporary mixed media artist from Quincy, Ma. A lifelong lover of art, she graduated from University of Massachusetts at Boston and also studied art at The Art Institute Of Boston and The School Of The Museum Of Fine Arts in Boston. A lot of Tracy’s work features collage and she is inspired by nature, flowers, people and animals. In addition to working from her home studio, Tracy also teaches in-person classes and participate in artisan events and gallery exhibits.

Materials List:

• Acrylic Paint - your favorite colors plus red, yellow, blue, black and white
• Mark Making Tools - variety of pens, colored pencils, china markers or regular markers, pastels, ink, crayons, etc.
• Papers to paint on - anything from mixed media paper, newsprint, old book pages, deli paper, etc. It’s good to have an assortment and Tracy will have some to choose from as well.
• Paint Brushes - 5 or so not expensive acrylic brushes in assorted sizes. 
• Stencils and stamps - bring what you have and Tracy will ave some as well.
• Matte or satin gel medium - whatever you have, Tracy uses liquitex. 
• Please bring a reference photo of a portrait or full body picture of you, a friend, family member or celebrity, in color that you’d like to use. Try to choose a clear photo if you can. It is also sometimes helpful to have a second version of the same photo in black and white to see values. 
• Tracy will provide canvas boards

Pricing your own artwork is probably the most anxiety inducing aspect of being an artist. What is your art worth? Where do you start? What if you overprice, or under price? Yikes! Bring your questions and concerns to this candid discussion of artwork pricing and goal setting strategy.

Free coffee and donuts to be provided by SlackTide Coffee Roasters.

Interested in teaching? Teaching is great way to improve in your craft, create a name for yourself in the local community and earn money at the same time. Maureen has an expansive background in teaching teachers! She will lead you through the ins and outs of getting started.

Free coffee and donuts to be provided by SlackTide Coffee Roasters.

This 2 day workshop will be an enriching experience for the beginner or the more advanced abstract artist.  We will reinforce the steps to create an Intuitive Abstract painting, and then reshape our composition so the end result brings to mind the essence of a landscape/seascape painting.  

The process involves mark making, which we will practice, and layering with color via paint, ink or collage.  There are landscapes with trees, ocean or rocks and hills that we will coax out of our process.  Come breathe, relax and sink into the laying down of color and line and enjoy the emerging landscapes. 

While there are many types of tools used, there will also be a wealth of paint and tools to share.  Join us while we explore the intriguing world of Intuitive Abstract Painting and discover what landscapes you can bring to life!  Lunch will be provided the 2nd day. 

About Kelley: After getting her Art History degree at Wheaton College, Kelley continued taking art classes at various Art Associations for 10 years before she started painting.  First with watercolor, then oil and now happily with acrylic and mixed media, it has been a lifetime of growing and exploring all things art.  

Kelley has won numerous awards, and has taught classes and workshops for many years.  While for the majority of her career Kelley has been a literal, representational painter, in the past 4 years she has been diving into abstraction, particularly Intuitive Abstraction.  The history involved on the canvas, the multiple layers, the reveal and conceal and push and pull are what attracts her to this method. 

A favorite thing to do is to travel, and be inspired by different landscapes and  cityscapes.  Kelley has traveled to Holland to paint, along with many places on this side of the ocean, namely Nova Scotia, Sedona, Santa Fe, St. Simon’s Island, Seattle, San Miguel de Allende, MX, California and Maine. 

In 2009 Kelley founded the Artists’ Challenge Group “Girls Just Wanna Paint” which is a collection of award winning artists  who post a response to a new topic every month consecutively since July of 2009. Aside from the Providence Art Club Kelley is a member of the North River Arts Society in Marshfield, MA.  She has taught at the Art Club, Bristol Art Museum, and at North River Arts Society.

Materials List for Kelley MacDonald’s Abstract Painting Workshop

All, or as many as you can manage:

Disposable palette of any size  - but bigger is better!

Artist’s Tape (Painting tape OK too!)

Substrates: 

• Paper to paint on - watercolor or Canta-paper from strathmore, Bristol paper, etc. 
• Assortment of  canvases (at least 3) (12x12 to 24x24 – shape, size does not matter)
• one or two larger canvases - from 16x16 – 30x30 canvas or panel

Paint (Acrylic):

• one large tube of any kind of black paint, can be of a lesser grade than professional
• Gesso or large tube of white paint
• warm and cool of red, yellow and blue (ex. Alizarin or rose and cad red light, ultramarine and cerulean or pthalo blue, cad yellow medium and cad lemon)
• any other colors you like

Brushes and Mark Makers:

• 1-inch, 2-inch and 3 inch flat brushes if you have them
• a liner brush (from watercolor) and/or a small, tiny brush of your choice
• as huge a brush as you dare to bring!
• Any carving type item, credit card, (that you no longer use), Catalyst – Blick and Michaels sells them 
• Shapers, goo spreaders and palette knives

And (any of these):

• Stabilo pencils, vine charcoal, charcoal, derwent watercolor pencils, graphite pencils, any pastel sticks you like.  As long as you have SOME of these – you certainly don’t need all.  Pencils, yes, then some colored type pencils and/or pastel sticks, If you happen to have Neocolor or Neocolor II crayons, gel pencils or markers, colored or black and white – 
• Any type of gel medium for exploring collage, and any thin paper or colored paper to incorporate (NOT strictly necessary)
• Sprayer to keep acrylics moist
• Bucket or big yogurt/ricotta tub for water

BASICALLY bring what you have - don’t go spend a fortune - we will have things to try~!

FLEX YOUR IMAGINATION

If you have taken an abstract class from me you probably already have everything you need!

In this intensive workshop with internationally acclaimed artist, instructor, and author Liz Haywood- Sullivan, we will explore the intricacies of painting water and reflections in pastel. We will use underpainting to assist the development of the layers of transparency found in water. Topics to be covered include depicting reflections, how water behaves when calm and when moving, water in the dramatic seascape, how to use aerial perspective principles in water to create distance, seeing and painting correct values, plus much more. Each day will start with a demonstration and there will be plenty of daily individual instruction at your easel. This is a studio workshop for artists with some pastel experience.

Instructor Bio:

Liz Haywood-Sullivan, PSA-MP, IAPS/EP, has been dedicated to working exclusively in the pastel medium since 1996. Her attraction to the medium is pastel's unique ability to capture light and atmosphere in the landscape. She is a sought-after instructor and judge for pastel societies and arts organizations around the world. Liz authored the popular book Painting Brilliant Skies and Water in Pastel (Northlight, 2013). Her award-winning pastel paintings have been featured in numerous books and magazine articles, and have appeared in national, international and museum exhibitions worldwide. Liz is a President Emerita of the International Association of Pastel Societies (2013-2017) and is the current president of the North River Arts Society in Massachusetts. Her work is represented by Vose Galleries of Boston. www.lizhaywoodsullivan.com

Materials List for Workshop: MaterialsList2024.pdf

Recommended Lodging for Out-of-Town students:

Inn at Scituate Harbor

Fairview Inn