The WSA routinely hosts artist demonstrations, talks and critiques. These events are open to the public. For those who cannot attend, we are pleased to share some of these events in the following videos. We hope you will find them to be both educational and inspiring.
Dr. Robert Savage
“The History of the Wellesley Society of Artists – 90 Years of Art and Community”
In partnership with the Wellesley Historical Society and the Wellesley Free Library
November 2023
More About Robert Savage…
Dr. Savage is a retired surgeon, assistant clinical professor at Harvard Medical School and Past President of the New England Society of Plastic & Reconstructive Surgeons. He is a life-long art lover and started a second career in 2016 as a local art historian, collector and now artist.
He is inspired by the Cape Cod art tradition of the Cahoons and Elizabeth Mumford, and the soulful Provincetown and Truro paintings of Anne Packard and Edward Hopper. His work concentrates on iconic scenes of New England, especially the Cape and Islands. During his process he enjoys using different geometric shapes and color experimentation. His latest project is transforming classic, early works by the Provincetown Printers into what he refers to as “white line” acrylics.
He currently curates two art blogs on Facebook: the Wellesley Collection Art Review and Friends of the Rockport Art Association and Museum. He has published over one hundred brief biographies on AskArt.com and consulted for the Massachusetts Horticultural Society on art acquisitions.
His personal collection has been featured in the American Fine Art Magazine, and he is a frequent art history contributor to the Wellesley-Weston Magazine, where his career transition from physician to artist was featured in the 2022 summer edition. He is an exhibiting and board member of the Wellesley Society of Artists. His current writings and lectures focus on women artists of the early twentieth century.
Kathy Soles
The Landscape and Abstraction
November 2023
More about Kathy Soles…
Kathy Soles holds a B.A. from Emmanuel College in Boston and an M.F.A. from American University in Washington D. C. She studied printmaking and painting at Maryland Institute College of Art and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. A professor of painting and drawing at Emmanuel College, she lives and maintains a studio in Milton, Massachusetts.
She has exhibited widely in both group and solo exhibitions. Her exhibition venues include Danforth Museum of Art, MA; Portland Museum of Art, ME; Dartmouth College, NH; Fitchburg Art Museum, MA; Fuller Craft Museum, MA; The National Museum of Fine Arts, Viet Nam; and Apothiki Arts Center, Greece. She has also been awarded artist residencies at the Millay Colony, Austerlitz, NY, the Apothiki Arts Center in Paros, Greece, the Goetemann Residency, Gloucester, MA, and the Provincetown Compact C-Scape Residency. Public collections of her work in Massachusetts include the Boston Public Library, Meditech Corporation, Emmanuel College and CSC.
Leslie Graff
September 2023
More about Leslie Graff…
Leslie Graff holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Brigham Young University. She spends her time working in acrylics and mixed media. While exploring a variety of series, her work is unified by a shared theme– the complexity of human experience. It explores identity, relationships, connection, influence, and specifically the intangibles of thought and emotion. She is fascinated by personal narratives, interactions within culture, and the intimacy of the mind. She is most known for her domestic series and explorations of women. A bold palette and the use of discrete color characterize her pieces. She draws inspiration from midcentury illustration and is influenced by artists Wayne Thiebaud, and Coby Whitmore. Her work has been exhibited in group and solo shows across the country, including a dozen museums and is regularly seen in universities, and galleries. Her work is held in many private collections. Her work has been featured in many places, including Good Housekeeping, HGTV, a profile on Forbes.com, the Boston Globe, and featured on Inquiry on NPR. Leslie is currently on the faculty at the Danforth Art Museum School. She has taught creative arts in California, Utah, Massachusetts, and Virginia and lectures frequently. She is active in humanitarian work and is passionate about building opportunities for others.
Liz Haywood-Sullivan
April 2023
More about Liz Haywood Sullivan…
Liz is a landscape artist dedicated to painting in the pastel medium. Her award-winning paintings are exhibited and collected around the world. In 1996, she left the design world to follow her passion for fine art and since then has worked as a dedicated professional artist, art educator, and arts advocate.
In 2021, Liz rejoined the board of the North River Arts Society in Marshfield Hills, MA and shortly thereafter became its President.
From 2013 to 2017, Liz was President of the International Association of Pastel Societies, where she managed 3 international conventions and 12 international exhibitions. She is on the Board of Advisors for The Pastel Journal. She has earned Master Pastelist status with the Pastel Society of America and has Master Circle and Eminent Pastelist designations with IAPS. Her paintings have appeared in art magazines around the world, and she appears in 12 Artist Network videos, and in numerous books, including authoring the popular instructional book Painting Brilliant Skies and Water in Pastel (Northlight Books, 2013.)
In addition to her painting, Liz’s current schedule includes teaching workshops nationally and internationally, along with judging and demonstrating for numerous pastel societies and art organizations. In 2016, She was invited to be a featured artist, instructor, and speaker at the Second International Biennial Pastel Exhibition in Suzhou, China. And in 2018, she was the keynote demonstrator and a faculty artist for the Pastel Society of Australia’s First Pastel Expo. Her artwork is represented by Vose Galleries of Boston, the oldest family-owned gallery in the United States.
Visit Liz’s website
Julie Beck
November 2022
More about Julie Beck…
Artist Statement
Through still life and portraiture, I use painting to create accessible work that relates the innate desire to connect. By manipulating design, composition, and narrative, I am able to intimate ideas that are either preconceived or find themselves in the process. My artistic impulse stems from a singular obsession with painting that I have realized cannot be denied. Whether poetic or polemical, my work strives to leave an impact on viewers that leaves them asking questions about the connections we find around ourselves.
Artist Bio
Julie Beck was born and raised in Western Upstate New York. From 1998 to 2002, she attended Roger Williams University in Rhode Island where she graduated valedictorian with a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics. From 2002 to 2011, she worked primarily as a freelance designer but continued to draw and paint as a self-taught artist. In 2011, a move to Massachusetts introduced her to the Academy of Realist Art, Boston which catapulted her abilities to a new level. Since then, Julie has become both an instructor at, as well as the Assistant Director of ARA Boston.
Julie is currently working out of her personal studio at ARA Boston, where she is developing a body of work that explores the concepts of nostalgia, relationships, and identity. She has a wide range of painting subjects including still life paintings and animal/figurative works. Her work can be found in private collections throughout the US and internationally.
See more of Julie’s work, visit her website
Robert Mesrop
April 2019
More about Robert Mesrop…
Robert Mesrop, has been a painter and artist for over 45 years. He received his Bachelor of Professional Arts degree from the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. For 22 years he was an Art Director at J. Walter Thompson and at Kenyon and Eckhardt Ad agencies in New York.
Mr. Mesrop’s primary medium is watercolor, although he also works in oil and drawing media. He is fascinated by the changing light and shadows, while trying to capture moments in time and finds the freshness and luminosity of watercolor the perfect medium. He says “it requires discipline, planning, and forethought. I try to work through the painting mentally so that I can approach the paper with the spontaneity that is the hallmark of the medium.”
Mr. Mesrop is a Signature Member of the American Watercolor Society, the New England Watercolor Society, the Pennsylvania Watercolor Society, a Master Artist member of the Cape Cod Art Association, a member of the Creative Art Center, Chatham, MA, the Transparent Watercolor Society of America, and the Salmagundi Club in New York City. Currently he is a painting and drawing instructor at the Cape Cod Art Center in Barnstable, MA, and conducts workshops in Maine and Massachusetts. He exhibits his work at the Fresh Paint Gallery in Yarmouth Port, MA and the Cultural Center of Cape Cod.
To see his work, visit his website
Jeanne Rosier Smith
February 2019
More about Jeanne Rosier-Smith
Jeanne Rosier Smith grew up painting, but first discovered pastel when a box of Nupastels arrived in the mail from an uncle in Massachusetts, 20 years ago. “You might enjoy these,” he said. He had no idea. She studied art at Georgetown University and later at the DuCret School of Art in New Jersey. After earning a Ph.D. in English and teaching college English for ten years, she made the switch to full time professional art in 2000. She now maintains a Pastel Studio school, teaches around the country, and is represented by several East Coast galleries.
Smith is a signature member of the Pastel Society of America, the American Society of Marine Artists, the Connecticut Pastel Society and the Pastel Painters Society of Cape Cod, an IAPS Masters Circle member, a member of the Salmagundi Club and a Copley Society Master Artist. She has served as an educational consultant to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and has also given pastel demonstrations and gallery talks at the Museum. She has exhibited at the Massachusetts State House, the Guild of Boston Artists, the National Arts Club and museums around the country. Her work has garnered top awards, including the Prix de Pastel (Best in Show) from IAPS, The International Association of Pastel Societies, a Grand Prize in International Artist Magazine Seascape Competition, and an Art Spirit Foundation Gold Medal Award for Excellence in Pastel at the American Artists Professional League. She has placed in the Pastel Journal’s Pastel 100 for the past six years, including first place in 2017. Her work has appeared in International Artist Magazine, American Art Collector, and The Pastel Journal, and she is a regular contributor to the Pastel Journal, which featured her work in August 2018. Her paintings are in collections on five continents. She is represented by Cecil Byrne Gallery of Charleston SC, Gallery 31 of Orleans MA, Arnold Art of Newport RI, Susan Powell of Madison CT and Powers Gallery of Acton MA.
To learn more about Jeanne and see her artwork visit her website.
Roy Perkinson
Wellesley artist, Roy Perkinson gave an illustrated lecture, “Secrets from the French Pastels Revealed- Treasures from the Vault”, at the Wellesley Free Library. This program gave the audience things to look for when visiting the exhibit “French Pastels- Treasures from the Vault” on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. There are many aspects of how these magnificent paintings were made that are hard to discern unless like Roy Perkinson you have had the opportunity to see them unframed, without their usual protective glazing. As former head of the paper conservation laboratory at the MFA, Roy was privileged to see a number of features of these paintings that are hard to perceive as shown in the gallery. He shared these “secrets” and helped viewers better understand the pastel process of these masters.
More about Roy Perkinson
Roy Perkinson has been a life-long painter. With his deep fascination for the visible world and how it works, Roy studied physics at MIT, art in a private art school and at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and art history at Boston University. Subsequently he trained in paper conservation under F. W. Dolloff at the Museum of Fine Arts, eventually becoming the head of the Museum’s Virginia Herrick Deknatel Paper Conservation Laboratory. Throughout these years he continued to pursue his love of painting, and has been in many group and solo exhibitions. In 2006 he retired and now spends all his time painting, exploring the possibilities of oil, pastel and watercolor.
To see some of Roy’s artwork visit his website
Carol O’Malia
“A Painted Journey-The Joy of Finding Your Place”
November 2018
More about Carol O’Malia…
Carol O’Malia received her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and her MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. For nearly 20 years she has been in numerous one person and group shows throughout the US and as far as Greece and received numerous awards. She has completed several series of paintings focusing on water scenes and pillows that reveal an ability to create nostalgic narratives while masterfully capturing light. Carol’s large scale paintings are in private and public collections worldwide. To see more of her work visit her website
Leslie Graff “Translating Thoughts and Meaning into Art”
October 2018
Graff’s lecture, “Translating Thoughts and Meaning into Art,” includes discussion about her various series of works and artistic process. She talks about her work from early brainstorming and sketches, research and photoshoots to various techniques and mediums. Graff also shares the meaning and ideas in her work and what prompts her creative decision-making.
Graff holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Brigham Young University. Her work has been exhibited in museums including the New Britain Museum of American Art, Cape Cod Museum of Art, Newport Art Museum, the Fitchburg Museum, Brownsville Museum of Art, Alexandria Museum of Art, Danforth Art Museum, Southern Mississippi Museum of Art and Attleboro Art Museum. Graff is currently on the faculty at the Danforth Art Museum School. She lives in Sutton with her husband and three sons.
For more information, visit about Leslie visit her website
Michelle Jung Seascape Demo in Oil
Sponsored by the Wellesley Society of Artists and the Needham Art Association – April 2018
About Michelle Jung…
Michelle Jung is recognized for her large paintings of majestic seascapes and landscapes. A Connecticut native, Michelle works outdoors from life creating small paintings that she then uses as references for large paintings done in her studio. Nature, beauty, and the dualistic qualities we feel as humans continue to inspire her work. Michelle uses classical methods of painting in layers to evoke a timeless feeling to her work.
She received an MFA in Painting from the Academy of Art University, and a BA in Art History from Colorado State University. She has participated in International and National exhibitions, including most recently the Art Renewal Center’s International Salon (2016 & 2017) and the California Art Club’s Gold Medal Exhibition (2016, 2017 & 2018). She has won several notable awards, among them awards from The Guild of Boston Artists and Oil Painters of America. Jung maintains two studios: one in Wellesley, Massachusetts and the other in Santa Cruz, California.
For more information visit her website: michellejungstudios.com
Susan Swinand Critique
In our annual Margaret Fernside Memorial talk, the WSA invited members to bring two paintings for critique by Susan Swinand. Sue is a painter with a preference for water media. Although her work is usually abstract, the structures and forms of nature are a big influence for her. Sue received a BFA in painting from Moore College of Art and studied in Europe following graduation. When she returned, she studied the Philosophy and Appreciation of Art. Sue taught studio classes at the Worcester Art Museum for more than 25 years and visual communications, design and painting at Clark University. She currently teaches painting at Wellesley College Greenhouses.
Sally Meding Watercolor Demo
Sally Meding, a WSA exhibiting member shared her creative process in a painting demonstration entitled “Realism through Abstraction” at the Wellesley Free Library. The demo was preceded by the WSA Fall show awards presentation.
Sally Meding, a native of London, obtained a PhD in Freiburg, Germany and immigrated to the United States in 1990. She is a signature member of the New England and Southwestern Watercolor Societies, as well as the WSA. As a versatile artist, Sally creates mostly semi-abstract works in watercolor on paper. In her artwork, she playfully uses color and shape in a game of “contrasts,” particularly pitting warm against cool, bright against dull, and light against dark. She enjoys the challenge of painting a wide variety of subject matter where a “contrast” catches her eye. She has appeared on HGTV “That’s Clever” and is published in Nita Leland’s book, “Confident Color” (North Light, 2008). She has a studio in Natick, and teaches watercolor at all levels in the Metro West area. Sally’s artwork is in private and corporate collections in Germany, the UK, California, Texas, and Massachusetts.