The Massachusetts Audubon Society’s Joppa Flats Education Center announces the opening of an exhibit featuring the watercolor paintings of Peabody artist Paula Kulas. The show, entitled “Exploring Nature,” will be held in the Center’s Juliet Kellogg French Room from January 10 through February 21, 2010. The artist will introduce her work at an opening reception on Sunday, January 10, at 2:30 p.m. at the Joppa Flats Education Center in Newburyport.
With a degree in biology, Paula Kulas subscribes to John Muir’s belief about being outdoors in nature: “For my part, I should like to stay here . . . all my life or even all eternity.” She paints in order to inspire others to seek the transformational experience of the wilderness.
The artist’s creative process starts with gathering in the sensory elements of nature. She continues by choosing images based on strength of color, distinctive contrasts, interesting organic shapes, and simple design. She uses field sketches, photographs, and sound recordings to recreate in the studio what she originally experienced outdoors. Working with the spontaneity of watercolor allows an organic blending of science and art; this, says Paula, makes her feel as if she is “participating with nature and becoming one with it, which is what I wish to express in the completed work.”
Paula Kulas has received several “Best in Show” awards from a wide variety of North Shore art groups and juried exhibitions. She has led a number of field study expeditions in the Sierra Nevada in California. Currently, she gives private lessons in watercolor and teaches watercolor classes for the Peabody Recreation Department.
The reception on January 10 is open to the public free of charge. A portion of all purchases made during Kulas’s show helps to support Mass Audubon’s Joppa Flats.
Mass Audubon is the largest conservation organization in New England, caring for 34,000 acres of conservation land and providing education programs for 200,000 children and adults annually. Mass Audubon’s Joppa Flats Education Center, located at One Plum Island Turnpike in Newburyport, is a natural history education center that is open to the public Tuesday through Sunday and Monday holidays, 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Call 978-462-9998 for information about additional programs and events, or visit the website at www.massaudubon.org.
