April Artist Spotlight
Meet Cynthia Demir
I have been drawing as far back as I can remember. At the age of two I drew circles with smaller circles around the larger circles. I have vivid memories from nursery school of first using finger paints. I can still remember the magic of how the colors blended together as I moved the paint around with my fingers. My mother was an artist so there were always pens, pencils, and paints available. She even had an easel set up in the living room with an oil painting of my sister and I. I remember the soft gobs of paint on her wooden palette and the smell of oil paint. We had paper taped to the walls of our playroom so as to be able to draw at any time.
I received a BFA in painting from RISD and then worked for a while as a free lance artist. The following year I went to Simmons College to get a teaching degree. Eventually I worked at a newspaper and an advertising agency. I studied fashion design and worked at a childrenswear company but what I loved most was painting and drawing. After getting married and having children, I continued drawing and sewing. I sometimes did quick sketches of my husband and daughters. I joined a group of artists who set up drawing sessions where we all chipped in to pay for models. We added lighting, drapery and props to create interesting compositions. I was always inspired by Matisse and some of the expressionist painters. An exhibit at the MFA in Boston, “Matisse in the Studio” was especially interesting. On display along with his paintings and sculptures were some of the objects he used in his compositions. The way he incorporated some of the same objects in very different styles of painting showed what even the simplest object could inspire.
I have been primarily a watercolorist, painting landscapes and flowers. Originally from upstate New York, I grew up in an apple orchard, so nature and botanicals have always been favorite subjects. I’ve been a high school English teacher, an owner/designer of a greeting card company, a professional calligrapher, a college admissions counselor–and a member of WSA for over 20 years.
Like most of us, I started out attempting realism, but I found my real joy was abstraction. A series of abstracted watercolor landscapes continued through many years, with frequent breaks for more realistic flower paintings. I felt busy. I had held offices and taken jobs in my associations—Wellesley, Needham, Dedham, Scituate—and a Signature Membership in the New England Watercolor Society. There were many show opportunities and I tried to exhibit in all of them. For twenty years I hosted an annual Open Studio in my home. Also for many years I have been making annual collaborative books with Kay Villa. She lives in Wisconsin now, so we mail the pages back and forth, each of us filling our side of the page. For our last three books I painted small watercolors. 
Instead of painting as much as I once did, I am trying totally new things. Filling a sketchbook with tiny pen and ink drawings. Filling another with abstract paper collages. Drawing animals in colored pencil over acrylic patterns. Adding watercolor to Gauguin’s trace monotype technique. Exploring mark making on collage papers. Creating small books filled with patterns. Few of these things are frame-worthy. I do them just for me.
When I was a little kid, I spent many hours drawing little stick figures, making paper dolls with large elaborate wardrobes, went through a long obsession of drawing horses, also building dioramas in my bedroom from models of dinosaur skeletons lit with flashlights. (Installations!) I took paints outdoors and painted landscapes. When I was about 12, my parents were kind enough to send me to Saturday morning painting classes at the Everson Museum in downtown Syracuse, where we would go out into the city, draw what we saw, and bring them back to class to paint. I continued with classes at the Museum throughout high school, mostly still life and portrait drawing.
