“I really like to see how people work because the process of how art is conceived and created has always been fascinating to me,” Holley Wall Flagg, an alumna, told Upper School watercolor students this week during a guest lecture about her art and process.
Ms. Flagg told the class that while she had loved art from an early age: "Creating in a lonely studio was not appealing— practical art with concrete assignments was so much more real to me." With this perspective in mind, Ms. Flagg worked for New York design firms after she graduated from Smith and studied graphic design at Parsons School of Design. Over time, Ms. Flagg began using her watercolor illustrations in design projects. Ms. Flagg demonstrated to the class how she built an image in a photo-editing program and then brought it to life through watercolors.
“Everyone approaches art in a different way and everyone creates different art,” she said.
The students were delighted to see the process behind Ms. Flagg’s range of creations, from several endearing dog portraits to playful renderings of a summer beach in Narragansett to paintings for the American Museum of Natural History’s calendars. This group of Upper School students was eager to learn directly from this alumnae artist after having seen some of her work, which is stored in the Chapin Archives, in a previous class.
After Ms. Flagg’s discussion, the students worked on their own paintings using techniques inspired by painter John Singer Sargent, whom they are studying, as well the more contemporary work of the day’s guest artist.