The Wellesley Society of Artists and the Needham Art Association annual joint artist demonstration is Saturday, April 5, 2025 1:30-3:30pm at the Wellesley Free Library, Wakelin Room with artist Nancy Friese. This program is free and open to the public.

“Water Based Painting in View of Nature: Materials, Methods and Practice”

The afternoon workshop will be divided into three sections. First we will have an overview of the different basic qualities of watercolor, gouache and acrylic water media painting and drawing materials with suggestions from the guest artist and input from any experienced participants.  Attendees may create small sampler sheets of each as takeaways. Then  a short demonstration about the additive and subtractive methods of building a composition will be shared including working wet over dry,  broad to detail, light to dark, and a whole surface touch.  In closing, a few of the guest artist’s own finished paintings done from observation will be shown and explained with her tips for working in open-view of nature.  Why is perceptual painting of value, how is observing the natural world rewarding, and what ways may water mediums animate an idea will be a focus from our artistic vantage.  Participants may bring one small piece of their own to share as an ending.

More about Nancy Friese…

Nancy Friese is a painter-printmaker who works in open-air. Friese’s paintings and prints have been exhibited in over 30 solo shows and 170 group shows, nationally and internationally. Friese was elected as a National Academician in the National Academy of Design in New York and received two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and the Japan-US Friendship Commission Creative Artist Fellowship. Her paintings, prints and drawings are represented by Cade Tompkins Projects. 

She was granted a Yale University Summer School of Music and Art at Norfolk Fellowship, Anne Bremer Award, Wilder Traveling Fellowship and Elizabeth Canfield Award during her artistic studies. She received a six- month Lila Acheson Wallace Giverny Fellowship, a Blanche E. Colman Award, Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award and a George Sugarman Foundation Grant for painting. Artist’s Resource Trust (ART) funded her exhibition and residency at Trustman Gallery. Her works are in 50 corporate and museum collections and over 100 private collections including the National Museum of Women in Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum UCLA, the Spencer Museum of Art, the Portland Art Museum, Fidelity Investments, Wellington Management, The Federal Reserve of Boston, Homeland Security Department, and Sloan Memorial Kettering Cancer Center.  Wingate Studio, Tamarind Institute, Oehme Graphics, Mimosa Press and Sundog Press published her prints. She was an artist in residence at Andy Warhol’s Montauk Nature Preserve administered by The Nature Conservancy and is currently the inaugural artist in residence for The Garden Conservancy of America focusing on three garden members: Wethersfield Estate & Garden, The Mount, and Blithewood Garden. 

In addition to earning a BS degree from University of North Dakota and an MFA  degree from Yale University, Friese studied in the graduate painting program at the University of California, Berkeley, and studied painting and printmaking at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Friese is a full professor at Rhode Island School of Design.