My second studio visit was with Winifred Way (Winnie if you please!) of Dover, Delaware. Winnie’s studio is pretty much where ever she parks her bicycle and gets set up. You see, she’s a “plein air” artist. Plein air artists work outdoors at locations of interest and hope to catch ephemeral light and scenes. They learn to work quickly and confidently, because if they’re slow, they miss the light! Winnie works with water colors and pen and ink sketches too.
I love her portraits that you can see on her Facebook page, and of course the plein air landscape works. Winnie does custom watercolor paintings of her client’s homes too!
Winnie has some of her work online on Instagram, and recently had a nice show at the Dover Public Library!
It turns out that Dover is a pretty small town! Winnie is a close family friend to my wife’s colleague. We were talking about maybe doing a little kayak trip and she said she has another friend whose home accesses a local pond. I said my sister-in-law works for Winnie’s friend and Winnie said “Ro?” (my sister in law’s name!) I had no idea she knew Ro, and vice versa. On further discussion, we figured out that we worked in different stores in the mall back in the 80s, right across the hall from each other, and that was where I remembered her from! She talked about working with my wife’s colleague and another of the nurses my wife worked with.
In our lively conversation, we talked a little about her experiences working as an artist in New York City from 1990s til 5 years ago, when she moved back to Dover to help her parents out. Winnie is active in Dover’s art scene, paints frequently with other plein air artists locally and teaches some drawing classes too.
If you see Winnie at the side of the road or in a park someplace, stop and say hey! You’ll enjoy it, she’s a lot of fun!
