A life in paint: Artist Maureen Van Nostrand

Maureen Van Nostrand, of Bridgewater Twp., will be featuring her latest black and white series of oil paintings during the Artists Open House Weekend tour, Oct. 8-10. STAFF PHOTO/STACI WILSON
Maureen Van Nostrand, of Bridgewater Twp., will be featuring her latest black and white series of oil paintings during the Artists Open House Weekend tour, Oct. 8-10. STAFF PHOTO/STACI WILSON

Maureen Van Nostrand, of Bridgewater Twp., will be featuring her latest black and white series of oil paintings during the Artists Open House Weekend tour, Oct. 8-10. STAFF PHOTO/STACI WILSON

Back in her business major days at King’s College, Maureen Van Nostrand might not have been able to tell you her professor’s name.
But she could show you the picture she drew of the professor in her notes.
“I never stopped drawing,” Van Nostrand said, although she didn’t take an advanced art class until she began a full-time job as an artist.
Home while pregnant with her son Thomas almost 20 years ago, Van Nostrand began to paint. Her passion for art grew while her children were young. “While the babies would nap, I would paint,” said the mother of three. “Now, it’s all day, every day.”
With an artist’s eye, Van Nostrand looks for landscapes and scenes that inspire her. And while landscapes are some of her favorite things to paint, she looks for other subjects as well.
“I’ll look at an art magazine and see an artist who does animals. I’ll see his work and want to paint an animal. Or I’ll want to move from doing a large, wide landscape to building with very tight details,” she said, “It’s nice to mix it up.”
Van Nostrand said, “I’m never without ideas.”
And she’s always adding ideas. Van Nostrand carries a camera with her everywhere. “I’ll make my husband pull over so I can take a picture,” she said. She’ll also pause a movie if she likes the scenery and take a photo of the screen.
Van Nostrand’s preferred medium is oil paint. “I like the creaminess of it,” she said, and she appreciates that the paint stays wet for days so the artwork can be worked and reworked. “Today’s oil paints are much more user-friendly,” She said the paint can be cleaned with soap and water, not turpentine as had been necessary in the past.
But in recent months, she’s added acrylic paintings, working with Endless Mountains Gifts and Galleries to host group painting events.
Van Nostrand said she comes up with paintings for the class to fit a theme, and keeps them simple enough for art novices to complete.
“The people have been funny, gracious and super-sweet,” she said. “The tell me, ‘I never painted in my life and I love it.’”
The artist works out of her Bridgewater Township home where she’ll welcome people this weekend during the Artists Open House Weekend tour.
In addition to her other works, Van Nostrand will be showing and selling oil paintings from a black and white series she has been working on.
“Black and white goes with any décor, from retro to modern” she said.
And although many of her paintings have color, Van Nostrand doesn’t feel she’s sacrifice anything in the black and white series. “It’s all dealing with values,” she said. “All that matters is that I’ve captured the mood.”
The Artists Open House & Studio Tour takes place this week, Saturday through Monday, Oct. 8-10. Studios are open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. For more information about Van Nostrand, and the Artists Open House Weekend Tour, visit www.artiststour.com.

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