HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL
We are very busy getting our new space ready for this years workshops. As soon as it is we will post pictures.
To our great sadness Jennifer Gennari's workshop has been canceled till further notice. We will keep you updated.

PLEASE NOTE WE HAVE ONLY LIVE WORKSHOPS

However, you can see our instructors demos and more on https://masterdemos.art

Last month we highlighted our new instructors , Ricky Mujica, John Morra and Steven Assael.

https://www.whidbeyislandfas.com/ricky-mujica

https://www.whidbeyislandfas.com/john-morra

https://www.whidbeyislandfas.com/steven-assael

This month we highlight Judi Betts watercolor artist from South Carolina. Judi has had some fantastic recent publicity with the  opening of her  60 year Retrospective exhibit at the LSU Museum and Shaw Center in Baton Rouge. There were about 150 paintings in the exhibit from September 1 through January 6, 2024. She is  featured on the Art Rocks show on the Louisiana Public Broadcasting TV channel. Judi has taught in every state except for South Dakota and Delaware, and many states several times. Alaska and other parts of the Northwest have been special favorites.

Judi Betts, nws, aws, an artist from Baton Rouge, LA, is a highly respected painter, instructor, juror and author, who has attained an international reputation for her transparent watercolor paintings. She is the author of two award winning books: WATERCOLOR…Let’s Think About It (5th printing) and PAINTING…a QUEST toward XTRAORDINARY (5 AWARDS).

Judi has conducted over 425 workshops in 48 states and 10 foreign countries, including invitational sessions in Norway, Puerto Rico, Sweden and Canada. She has won over 125 awards in major competitions including the Transparent Watercolor Society of America “Master of Watercolor” designation; a special award for “Contributions to the medium of Watercolor” by Watercolor USA Honor Society and their Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012.

Feature artist is: Stacy Kamin

Stacy studied illustration and traditional animation at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, earning a BA in 2000. After graduation, she interned with a small animation company long enough to realize that illustration was not her calling, although a fascination with capturing movement was. This she would explore through line and paint as a fine artist.

She joined her family in Los Angeles and there found a well-respected Chinese artist, Shuqiao Zhou, to mentor her privately for six years. Zhou’s teachers came from the great Russian lineage of Ilya Repin and Valentin Serov, and through this expressive tradition, imparted a love of paint that is still a hallmark of Stacy’s work.

Drawn to the dramatic effects of Rembrandt, Stacy sought out the instruction of two well-known masters of this knowledge David A Leffel and Sherrie McGraw. She credits their influence for the startling light that she is able to achieve in her own work. “They introduced me to Abstract Realism, a way of painting so rich that I can’t imagine my education ever ending I will be a student of this great tradition my entire life.” https://www.whidbeyislandfas.com/stacy-kamin

Feature Artist  is Mike Kowalski, watercolor.

Mike divides  time between studios in Australia and Washington. He loves traveling on the dusty roads of the West, sketching and painting in watercolors and oils.

He  teaches internationally and in the U.S. and  enjoys the challenge of dropping into new territory with his brushes. In 2015 he  was awarded the coveted Silver Medal of Honor at the 148th AWS International Exhibition in New York, and in 2018 was invited to exhibit in the Masters of watercolor exhibition in St. Petersburg, Russia. His work is influenced by John Singer Sargent, Edward Hopper, Ogden Pleissner, Emile Kosa Jr. and many of the great illustrators including N.C. Wyeth and Dean Cornwell. https://www.whidbeyislandfas.com/mike-kowalski

Feature Artist is  Scott Conary.

Raised where the East Coast suburbs filtered into the woods and farms, Scott Conary (Rhode Island School of Design, BFA ’93) creates oil paintings of everyday objects and places with which we have complicated and often ambiguous relationships. Pulled from their context, these objects say something about how we interact with the world and one another. These are stories of the arbitrary nature of beauty, of melancholy, of fleeting triumph, and the camouflage of time: the mess and splendor of the broken egg, the weed that fights to survive in the gaps of our attention, the weathered door used for generations but now forgotten, and so on.

Conary is represented by the Principle Gallery (Alexandria, VA), Bowersock Gallery (Provincetown, MA), Turner Fine Art (Jackson, WY),Gallery 1261 (Denver, CO), and the Charlestown Gallery (Charlestown, RI) https://www.whidbeyislandfas.com/scott-conary

Click Here to view the 2024 Workshop Schedule.