Just received some great news! My painting, Color Burst, has been awarded the Scott Chamberlain Memorial Award (donated by Kristin Chamberlain) in the 13th Annual Green Mountain Watercolor Exhibition! Many thanks to juror Thomas Bucci for the award, and for accepting both Color Burst and Purple Kitsch into the exhibition.
The exhibition opens this weekend in the Red Barn Galleries at Lareau Farm, Route 100, Waitsfield, VT, and runs through July 20th. Gallery hours are Thursday-Friday, 4-9 pm, and Saturday-Sunday, 12-9 pm.
The 2025 Transparent Watercolor Society of America’s 49th Annual Exhibition is now open! I was very fortunate to attend the opening and artists’ dinner this past weekend in Kenosha, WI. This year’s collection of watercolors is incredible! I’m so honored my painting, Nostalgia, is part of this exhibition! (A short clip of some of the amazing artwork can be found on my Instagram account, cindihandyart.)
81 transparent watercolors were chosen by jurors, Matthew Bird, TWSA and Brienne M Brown. The exhibition will be held in the Kenosha Public Museum, in Kenosha WI, through August 3rd, 2025. Museum hours are Monday-Saturday, 10am-5pm, Sundays, 12pm- 5pm, and closed on July 4th.
It’s been a very busy spring, so I decided to paint small, starting with my Sugar Sack series, and now some teacups. These are just a few of the teacups, belonging to my mother, that now reside with my daughter. These watercolors are small! Two 4.5″ x 4.5″ squares and a 4.5″ x 6.5″ painting. Now I’m ready to dive into my next large painting!
I’m very happy to announce that my painting, Vivid Tangle, currently on display at the Expressions 2025 show, has been awarded the Gold Award! Many thanks to Derin Tanyol, juror of the show. Here are her very kind words about my painting: “A common reaction people have to art is to judge its quality based on how hard the artist appears to have worked. I try to resist that reaction, because it sometimes causes people to misjudge works for being minimalist or seemingly unlabored. But in the case of Cindi Handy’s Vivid Tangle, it was impossible to not be blown away by the depth of precision in every detail, but the hours and days and weeks Cindi must have spent delineating every fiber and bit of typeface; and by the fact that something so photorealistic could also be so abstract.”
Congratulations to the other award winners: Phil Merlino, Stephanie Gabris, and Jenny Horstman! The show will be on display through June 14th in the North Country Arts Gallery, at The Shirt Factory (Studio #120, 71 Lawrence Street, Glens Falls, NY). Gallery hours are Thursday – Saturday, 12 – 5 pm.
Something new this week! Here are five small watercolor paintings I just completed. I’m calling the series Sugar Sacks. I’ve been saving these sugar sacks for many years, not sure what to do with them. The sugar sacks are from the 20s and 30s, and I find them fascinating. Four different sugar companies, but the same style sacks and colored dye was used on all of them. Trained as a graphic designer, the strange fonts, lack of kerning, language, and images are so funny and interesting to me. Different from my usual painting technique, these watercolors only have a few layers and limited colors. (Very different from my typical colorful paintings!) I kept the aged colors muted and irregular, like the original sacks.
I’m very happy to have Vivid Tangle juried into Expressions 2025! A big thank you to Derin Tanyol for jurying my piece into the show. My painting, along with 77 other pieces from local artists, will be on display in the North Country Arts Gallery, at The Shirt Factory (Studio #120, 71 Lawrence Street, Glens Falls, NY). Gallery hours are Thursday – Saturday, 12 – 5 pm. The show opens May 3rd (5 pm), and runs through June 14th.
Vivid Tangle is a new painting I completed just in time for the show. It’s what I call a “sister painting” to Threads of Friendship. I take so many photos while staging a painting, and sometimes cannot decide between two compositions I like. Being my second take on embroidery floss, Vivid Tangle went a lot quicker (about 120 hours) to paint.
The opening of the 2025 American Watercolor Society’s International Exhibition was last night! Such an amazing display of watercolor paintings from around the world. I am so honored that my watercolor, Threads of Friendship, was included. The show is being held at the Salmagundi Club (47 5th Avenue, NYC), from April 7th – 25th. Gallery hours are 1-6 pm Tuesday – Friday, and 12-5 pm Saturday and Sunday.
I am incredibly thrilled to announce that my painting Nostalgia was accepted into the Transparent Watercolor Society of America’s 49th Annual Exhibition! Many thanks to the jurors, Matthew Bird and Brienne M. Brown, for this honor. The exhibition runs May 3rd through August 3rd at the Kenosha Public Museum in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, I finally completed my painting, Purple Kitsch, as part of my flowers in plastic series. This watercolor painting was an overly ambitious and frustrating painting to create. I had all sorts of difficulty with the kitschy purple plastic wrap, which is what drew me to the image initially. The image came from a photograph I took last year, at our local grocery store.
All watercolor paints have different transparency/opaqueness and some pigments leave gradated sediment in the texture of the paper. Even though I did multiple test swatches, and thought I found the perfect combinations of colors for the bright purple hearts, when I started working on my actual painting it was a disaster. I had to “erase” several areas of the painting multiple times, to try and get a smooth glaze of paint. As my frustration grew, I did everything possible to avoid painting for weeks. When I spend weeks or months on one painting, it’s not so easy to give up and throw it out, as much as I wanted to do with this one. This painting was a lesson in perseverance and humility, and I’m so glad it’s done!
Here is the final watercolor painting, followed by a short work in progress montage.
I’m very happy to announce that my painting, Nostalgia, was selected as a finalist in the Splash 26: The Best of Watercolor competition! My painting will be published in a special edition of Artists Magazine in July of 2025. Many thanks to juror Stephen Zhang and Artists Magazine for this wonderful honor!
Cindi Handy 