Katalin Spang

I have had a love-affair with art ever since I can remember. As a child, my favorite playthings were art materials. In New York City I attended the High School of Music and Art, and went on to college to get a BFA at The Cooper Union, followed by a wonderful year of graduate school of art at Villa Schifanoia in Florence, Italy, studying painting, earning an MA degree.

For 31 years I served as Fine Arts Teacher in public elementary schools in New York State and in Massachusetts. My energies went into bringing out the creativity in my students, which was a wonderful career.

After my retirement from teaching in 2008, I have been able to indulge in my lifelong passion – painting the landscape.

I like to paint directly from nature, painting on site, in all different seasons and locations. The source of many of these paintings were the beautiful places that I have traveled to. Sometimes the work gets finished on site, and sometimes it needs finishing in the studio. Other times, I use my own photographs as resource material for my paintings. I paint both in oil and watercolor.

In my paintings I attempt to capture the feeling or mood of a place, the beauty of nature and of scenes with interesting architecture. Light and atmosphere play a big part in the subjects I choose, and I love to create pleasing color relationships within a painting.

I am a juried artist member of the North Shore Arts Association in Gloucester, associate member of the Rockport Art Association, the New England Watercolor Society, and a member of the Newton Watercolor Society.

Awards:

Award of Excellence at the August, 2018 Emerging Artists’ Exhibit at Rockport Art Association.

Award of Excellence in Oil Painting at the November 2018 and 2016 exhibits of Reading Art Association.

First Place blue ribbon in the oil painting category at the November, 2014 Reading Art Association exhibit.

In the summer of 2002 I was the recipient of a grant, called “Art Renewal for Teachers” (ART), from the Philanthropic Institute of Boston. With this grant, I traveled to Tuscany, Italy, where I photographed the landscape and painted it in watercolors, en plein air and on returning home I held an exhibit at the Burlington Public Library, MA.