The Widlund Gallery at Tannery Pond Center presents: Watercolor: Masters & Students
Tuesday, November 25 - Saturday, January 3
Reception: Friday, December 12 | 4-6 PM
Gallery Hours: Tues – Fri, 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM | Sat, 12:00 - 4:00 PM | additional hours by appointment
Local Watercolor Instructors - Jan Palmer, Kate Hartley, Diane Swanson and Sarah Yeoman - will exhibit alongside their adult students’ paintings, at Tannery Pond Community Center’s Widlund Gallery. Over 50 local artists will be represented. Viewers will have a chance to experience watercolor techniques and styles, from beginners to masters. Many of the works will be for sale.
Kate Hartley
Kate Hartley moved to North Creek area in the Adirondacks over twenty years ago, from her long-time home of Burlington, Vermont. For over thirty-five years she has painted, exhibited and taught art, with watercolors as her specialty. Her own artwork often centers on still life, though she enjoys all aspects of realistic depiction, especially capturing the beauty of nature… the gesture of a leaf, a recumbent hill, or a misty morning at the forest’s edge. Light (and pears!) fill her paintings, which have won many awards over the years. She enjoys painting each ‘double entendre’ – a still life, which can be enjoyed as a simple painting, or as a commentary on human interactions.
Kate loves to travel, and after studying both art and education in college, she chose watercolors as a medium that can be taken along more easily - even on a bike or backpack. She also has a love of teaching, and leads visual art classes and workshops for all ages near her home in the Adirondack Mountains of New York.
In Burlington, Kate ran a small arts school for all ages, and now shares her love of art through classes and camps at the Queensbury Senior Center, Johnsburg Youth Committee, LARAC, Ti Arts, Friends of the Johnsburg Parks, and at H’ART Studio & Gallery.
Fifteen years ago, she added mosaics to her list of endeavors, as a vehicle for combining art and teaching. Over 2000 people have joined her in adding elements to a huge community mural: the North Creek Mosaic Project (look for it on Facebook, or www.visitnorthcreek.com).
In 2021, Kate started a gallery representing over 50 Adirondack artists at 276 Main St., North Creek, NY. Come visit H’ART Studio & Gallery (find us on Facebook, or www.visitnorthcreek.com).
Artist’s Statement: “As an artist, I have always found inspiration in close observation of the natural world, and in the ever-changing play of light and shadow over organic forms. My recent paintings are a continuing series of “pear portraits” in which the pears seem to be having conversations and interacting. Through my art, I seek to convey a sense of visual poetry.”
Contact the artist: email katehartleyvt@gmail.com
Jan Palmer
Jan Palmer is a formally trained, award-winning watercolorist, with gold and silver medals from the ADK National Exhibition of American Watercolors, and many awards from juried shows in Vermont, Connecticut and New York.
She arrived in NYC in 1952, and began her creative career through window displays, which led to magazine spots, greeting cards and then 35 years as a children’s book illustrator, for many major publishers – Simon and Schuster, Scholastic, Little Golden Books, Random House and more. She created exquisitely detailed illustrations of the adventures of Raggedy Ann and Andy, Thumbelina and other memorable characters.
“During my years illustrating I sometimes had folktales as subjects. A favorite book was “The Moon’s Choice” which had a pretty diabolical witch who changed a young woman
into a statue.” Many of her books will be on view at the exhibit.
In 1984, Jan moved to the Adirondacks, and found a wonderful old farmhouse to restore. Its barn has been converted to a large studio for her own work and classes. Since her retirement from illustrating, she has returned to her fine arts training, and her subjects now include portraits, landscapes, fly fishing and canoeing.
Diane Swanson
I am a lifelong artist who had the fortune of encouraging, supportive parents, teachers and peers early on. After receiving my BFA dual degree in Illustration and English from Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts, I went on to a life full of varied jobs more or less loosely tied to my art background, then on to marriage and motherhood, followed by a longtime career in arts administration, helping to create opportunities for other creatives and promoting the arts. I managed to continue my own creative endeavors throughout those years, but in 2020, faced with the challenges of the pandemic and the life change of becoming empty nesters, I kicked it into high
gear and turned my focus on being a full time artist. The effect those changes had on my art practice was monumental.
My work has been exhibited in many juried, group and solo shows throughout the Northeast and my landscapes and commissioned paintings have found homes with collectors all over the US. Recent juried show acceptances and awards include the Adirondack National Exhibition of American Watercolors 2023 & 2024 in Old Forge NY, Green Mountain Watercolor Exhibition 2022, 2023 & 2025 in Waitsfield VT, Bryan Gallery’s Land & Light & Water & Air Exhibit 2023, 2024 & 2025 in Jeffersonville VT, Silver Award winner in North Country Arts 2023 Annual Juried Show Glens Falls NY, Marblehead Arts Association National Juried Show 2025. I am a Signature member of Vermont Watercolor Society. I also conduct workshops, teaching artists of all levels how to enjoy watercolor as a medium.
Artist Statement: As an artist based in the Lake George/Adirondack region, much of my work celebrates the aesthetics of our landscapes, lakes and mountains. The inherent poetry of nature and the push and pull of positive and negative space inspire my painting practice. Although my paintings are representational, I approach my work with an eye to more abstract qualities, harmonizing atmosphere and movement with form, color and line. The forms of color and color within color that result from my painting process are the inspiration and what I choose to push back into negative space and pull forward into the positive is the challenge.
All of my work is biographical in the sense that I experienced that moment of being there on the scene, either painting it directly or taking photo reference for future paintings. Oftentimes, my work is metaphorical, standing in for a mood or story, evoking a sense of time and place. Life doesn’t really move in a straight line. It swirls around in a spiral-like dance, circling back sometimes to the past, reaching towards some future self and time, picking up wonder and magic and other strange debris along the way, revisiting what you know, so you can move forward into the unknown with hope and resilience.
Sarah Yeoman
Sarah Yeoman is an internationally recognized watercolor artist and instructor, and a signature member of the American Watercolor Society, with only 400 members throughout the world. Originally from Lawrenceville, NJ, she winters in northern Delaware but has spent the last 65 years summering on Indian Lake in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate NY. Her Great-Grand Uncle Buster Lewis built the family cabin in 1917 and also brought the famous Princeton Tiger bar to Farrells Tavern (Indian Lake Restaurant) in the 1930’s.
She has been featured in Watercolor Artist Magazine, The Art of Watercolor, Pratique Des Arts,The Artist Magazine and the Ellie Saab Haute Couture Paris Runway Catalog. She has served as a juror for The Western Federation of Watercolor Societies, The Northeast Watercolor Society and The Exhibition of American Watercolors in Old Forge, NY.
From her Crow and Raven series and Brandywine Valley landscapes to her 45 years of painting, paddling and exploring the Adirondacks in watercolor she is most at home in the woods and on the water following in the artistic steps of her painting hero, Winslow Homer.
Sarah has been teaching painting for 40 years and has been an instructor at Abanakee Studios in Indian Lake, Timberlock and for the Lake Placid Center for the Arts. She has also taught workshop across the US, Canada and Europe.Her work can be found at Abanakee Studios in Indian Lake,Gallery 46 in Lake Placid and Har’t Gallery in North Creek. You can also see more of Sarahs work and see her teaching schedule on her website.
www.sarahyeoman.com