Recently, I was asked to send a bio to the New Jersey Watercolor Society for a feature in their “Dialog” Newsletter. I got a little carried away, and wrote a long bio (which I am sure runs longer than their entire newsletter, but rather than scrap it, I decided to share it here.

From the time that I was small, my favorite activity was drawing. My mom had only to supply me with a clipboard loaded with paper and a pencil to keep me occupied wherever we went.  Growing up in Chicago, I spent weekends taking studio classes for high school students in the bowels of the Art Institute of Chicago and then venturing to a summer program at RISD.  Always the practical, career-oriented one, I was thrilled when I met a college counselor who introduced me to a field called “graphic design,” and when I received the prestigious Fred Conway Fellowship from Washington University in St. Louis, I was enticed to go there.

Although attached to a university, the art school at Wash U., was fully accredited and belonged to the consortium of art schools. The education was excellent and very classic in its approach. We studied anatomy, in-depth figure studies, and color theory, etc. but when I felt that “commercial art” was looked down upon. I quickly switched my major to drawing and painting, believing that this was the only time in my life when I would be able to immerse myself in fine arts and hoping it would be easy to gain the technical skills for a design career after college. It was the 70’s and there were no courses in watercolor. After our foundation courses, conceptual art and abstract work was encouraged and I became an oil painter, covering 4 X 6 ft canvases with large colorful abstract landscapes. 

After college, my friends were moving to New York City and I decided to join them for the summer and look for an entry level job in graphics. While looking for an apartment, I serendipitously met the late Tony Schwartz, a media guru who was responsible for a lot of sound innovation. At a time when unpaid internships were unheard of, he advised me that the way to get into the field was to work for someone really good — even if I didn’t get paid — and offered my services to his old Navy buddy who owned a small boutique design firm, after being a successful Art Director at CBS. Working for Irving Miller I learned basic layout and pasteup skills, typography and the nuts and bolts of design. From there I moved to magazine work at Country Living and Nautical Quarterly, and eventually opened my own small design firm in New York City.  Over the years I have done a lot of design work for museums (creating gift products), the Insurance Industry, restaurant groups, and not-for profits.  I have designed logos, corporate collateral and many publications and eventually moved my office into my home, teaching myself the necessary technical skills as the computer revolutionized the field. Working out of a home office allowed me to complete my work late at night as I had three sons within 5 years. One of my little ones told people that his Mommy’s name was “Marilyn Rose Design” because that is how he always heard me answering the phone.  

During those years, there was no time for fine art.  As my kids got older though, I suddenly felt a need to get back in touch with the part of myself that created with my hands. I even had one of my old colossal paintings shipped to me from Chicago to hang in my house as a reminder of my dormant artistic drive.

Finally, I started exploring some local courses, and when I tried watercolor for the first time, I was hooked. I remember being fascinated by what paint and pigment did together. While I was in art school, I bemoaned the fact that that I wasn’t passionate enough about my art to want to wait tables for the rest of my life, but now I suddenly felt compelled to paint.

I am largely self-taught in watercolor, having taken workshops with illuminaries like Charles Reid, Mel Stabin, Marge Chavooshean, Jean Uhl Spicer, Antonio Masi, Tim Saternow, and Iain Stewart.  At some point, through local plein air events, etc., I met members of the Essex Watercolor Club who asked me to show my work,  demo and teach workshops. As I was juried into New Jersey Watercolor Club, Garden State Watercolor Society, Northeast Watercolor Society, Catharine Lorillard Wolf Art Club etc. I began to show my work in both group and solo shows. As I began to receive more recognition and do more teaching, I started applying to, participating in, and winning awards at competitive plein air events such as such as the Festival at Wayne Art Center (PA) and Paint Annapolis (MD).  A real highlight of my career was becoming an Artist-in-Residence at Bryant Park in New York City and my work is in their permanent corporate art collection. In 2014, I began to teach regularly at The Art School at Old Church in Demarest, NJ. Eventually, as my watercolor took up more space in my personal and my professional life, I made room in my home studio to teach classes there as well. Each August, I teach a 4-day “Joy of Watercolor” plein air workshop at the Landgrove Inn in Vermont.  

This past year, when the world shut down because of COVID, I felt the urgency to continue my teaching, both for myself and for the community of artists that were part of my world. Thanks to my tech skills (and late nights scouring YouTube), I began teaching remote Zoom classes in March of 2020. Again, I felt the need to reexamine my teaching, and in doing so, really explore the way I work. I have never liked the idea of “paint-along” sessions, so I keep my classes small and participatory. I present small lessons on specific topics or subjects (some about technique, some about content) and present a one-hour demo. I then review the work that students have done on their own over the prior week by sharing photos of the work and making suggestions or corrections on-screen. Doing four full demos every week has certainly brought my teaching – and painting – skills to a new level.

The more I teach the more I agree with the artist Wayne Thiebaud: a good teacher teaches students how to teach themselves. He was talking about drawing, but I certainly see that applying to watercolor. I believe in teaching students how to find out everything about how the materials behave–the pigment, the water, the brush, and the paper. I instruct them to make a plan for a painting but then let the painting paint itself. I’ve come to realize over the years that my watercolor informs my life as much as my life informs my watercolor. Watercolor has taught me important life lessons: how to really look at things, to pay attention, and most importantly how to cede control at times. I have learned how to see the universe differently and how to (literally) go with the flow. I often stand back after completing a painting and wonder how it got there.

I am so glad to be on this creative journey. You can see more of my work, view demos, and learn about my classes at www.marilynroseart.com.