For many, November brings the ‘blahs’ so it seems appropriate that For Art’s Sake featured the colorful paintings of local artist Pam Sanders Watson during that dreary month to lift everybody's spirits. Pam has been painting on and off since she was about fifteen years old. "I started doing watercolors in the summertime in this very old house my parents owned on Bucks Creek in Chatham. I painted flowers in vases at the kitchen table. I love watercolor because of those blurry almost dreamlike effects that you can achieve."

"I have found that I can get a similar yet different effect in acrylics by mixing a lot of medium with the paints. They become transparent and can be layered. The wonderful thing about acrylic paint and oils is that you don't have to initially commit yourself to stone....they can be modified and changed to suit your whims. You can paint over and over on them. But truthfully, all paint is simply a means to an end and that is expression of an inner emotional response to an outer stimulus."

Her fondness for color and shape may have sprung from her love of flowers. "I think I have been attracted to flowers since I first saw one. I will never forget the pink lady slippers I saw in the Massachusetts woods as a child. Living in New England, flowers are the first bright promise after a long winter of subdued grey color. They almost shout "we are bringing you back to the living.' I am a self confessed plantaholic and someone who can never have too many flowers although I have come to the outer bounds of being able to maintain my gardens. So my interest in flowers probably relates to my interest in color. I am aware of the fragile incredible beauty of our planet Earth. I try to mix my colors up in painting the way they are in a garden. I did a brief stint in interior design and I have lots of color in my house...yellows, reds, blue greens. My mother says, ‘I don't know how you mix up so many colors in your house and yet it all comes out just right’. But I love gardens and my English cottage garden style is truly mixed- up color."

When Pam travels to Maine all she wants to do is paint. "Maine calls some part of my soul to express the beauty that I see. It has an untouched purity to it. I have begun traveling with canvas and paint wherever I go to chronicle what I see...they become like a paintographic journey. I also bring sketchbooks along." Pam rarely paints from a photograph, preferring to be outside in the moment. She feels that there is an energy that one loses when using a photograph. Of all the painters she has ever looked at Vincent Van Gogh is her ‘eternal favorite’. "I want to weep at the beauty he has created. The intensity of color and the energy is amazing. I have really never seen any other painter quite like him."

"I paint because I love to paint...I get so excited when I am about to begin one...I have to hold myself back and get a grip on the reins...and do the necessary sketches and not just plunge in the way I want to. In oils, I love the smell, the messiness of paint....and when in a painting I can be quite obsessed with it...it is a creation though not always successful and yet uniquely your own. I think what I truly love about painting is the total ambiguity. You begin from nothing and each stroke is a choice you are forced to make....so many choices in one painting...and yet you can change it if it doesn't work. Painting is a mystery...a puzzle to be solved…and when you solve it you realize it could have been done ten other ways."

Pam studied at both Pine Manor and Wellesley College, majoring in Visual Art. Later she studied with John Imber and Jill Pottle. In 2007, she exhibited in For Art's Sake’s first community exhibition ‘Made in Harvard’ and at the DeCordova Museum School in Lincoln. As for what’s up her colorful sleeve next, Pam explains, "I want to do a series of ocean edge pictures under water....I've been mentally marinating on this idea for awhile."

To contact Pam send email to: peswatson@gmail.com.