VWS Quarterly Newsletter

Williston artist and teacher Nancy Stone has lived a creative life and remembers "selling paintings of a black horse jumping over a fence in third grade for $1.00 each." Her supportive mother "always provided me with supplies and encouragement, so I was an artist long before I dared to call myself such an elevated title! Art projects or posters came first, then homework."

This supportive atmosphere combined with a naturally curious mind laid the groundwork for Nancy's dual careers of professional artist and teacher. In college, Nancy majored in ceramics but took classes in drawing, printmaking, wood tetonic design, and oil painting. This served her well in her first teaching job in Minnesota where she taught art in five schools to children in kindergarten through high school. She thrived on the challenge of teaching young children as well as more sophisticated teenagers, some of whom were on their way to art school. She credits her 25+ years of teaching as the "breeding ground for the diversity in my work today."

Nancy describes her foray into watercolor as an "epiphany" that came on a canoe trip with her husband. "I dipped my brush into the river water and painted the waterscape as it evolved over time, while riding upon the water. Wow!" Like so many other watercolor artists, she cites portability as an attraction, but then includes the challenge of the medium as well.

She said, "It provides diverse painting experiences, from multiple veiling of glazes on hot press paper to frolicking textures on Yupo paper."

Since taking up watercolor, Nancy has taken numerous classes with artists such as Frank Webb who taught her what she considers to "have been the biggest lesson I ever had" about the importance of value in painting. "Now, when I teach watercolor, I say, 'You need salt and pepper, you need the spiciness of lights and darks."

In addition to watercolor, Nancy studied acrylics and creative bookbinding and has made many fine art books using her acrylic paintings and collage as content on the pages, never watercolor because they cannot take the handling. One book that stands out documents the early years of the family golden retriever. She co-founded the Book Arts Guild of Vermont and continues as its co-chair and editor. Her books have been shown around Vermont in venues such as the T. W. Wood Gallery in Montpelier and Studio Place Arts in Barre. In 2006, one of her books won the juror's award at the Shelburne Arts Center Book Arts Guild show.

Nancy first learned of the Vermont Watercolor Society from a brochure she saw at Black Horse Art Supply. She was impressed by the venues for juried shows and the community offered by VWS. It wasn't long before she became a signature member.

Though she has retired from full time teaching, Nancy remains active in the field, teaching adults at the Community College of Vermont and mentoring children. "Teaching part-time offers income, but also allows me time to be an artist. The diverse ideas of young and adult students inform my own aesthetic." Her retirement has been anything but a slowing down. Among her regular activities, Nancy counts singing in a choir, ushering at the Flynn Center and St. Michael's Playhouse as well as her work in the Book Arts Guild. Her involvement in the Kids4Peace Project combines four of her passions: "children, art, peace and book arts."

Currently Nancy's watercolor on Yupo, "In a Time Before Names," is touring New England with a group show of Vermont artists as part of the state's 2009 celebration of Lake Champlain's quadricentennial. It began years ago as a drawing she did of an ancient whale skeleton housed at the University of Vermont, "a fossil uncovered during early railway construction that attests to the ancient history of Lake Champlain as an inland sea." The piece is a beautiful example of Nancy's process as an artist: "Manipulating the paint, pouring the color, losing control and then getting some back using lost and found edges, and of course, having fun. This is true no matter what medium I am working in. I like to push the medium to places I haven't yet been to throw myself off balance. I don't want to ever stop learning."