Creativity helps us relax and feel good about ourselves. It reveals our individuality. And watercolor painting is an ideal medium for experimentation. What’s more fun than sharing those discoveries with friends and family? Painting together is a sort of “dab and gab” adventure.

My role is to be your guide, not an “artist” instructing you. We start with some basic techniques in a practice session. Armed with a foundation, you can feel confident to experiment.

I have over 25 years teaching experience as a university professor, including courses in design. Now in retirement, I have added watercolor painting to my creative interests, building on a lifetime of folk arts I was lucky to learn from my mother.

My husband’s family settled here from Norway in 1890, buying a large amount of land to farm. The farmhouse was built in 1914, and renovated 100 years later by my husband and me, with the addition of gardens and a patio, to restore its historical charm. It’s large enough to provide studio space for art.

It all comes together in “Paint Leelanau”, with a love for this peninsula. .