Director’s Notes winter 2026
I am so pleased that Jeremy Miranda has once again found time in his busy schedule to teach a class in acrylic painting here at Sanctuary Arts. Acrylic Painting for Beginners & Intermediates (SA 6) meets Wednesday evenings for 10 weeks beginning February 4. Jeremy lives and works here in Eliot. He received his BFA from Mass Art and exhibits with Dianna Witte Gallery in Toronto, Evoke Contemporary in Santa Fe and Nahcotta Gallery here in Portsmouth. His work is grounded in the everyday and are primarily about observing the forms and color that make up the spaces in his immediate surroundings.
Margaret Dwyer offers a 6 week class: Color My World – Mastering Color with Watercolor (SA5) beginning Wednesday afternoons on February 4. Her class will dive deep into the use of transparent vs. opaques, mixing vs. straight from the tube, and knowing the properties of each color in your paint box. Margaret demonstrates many techniques throughout this class, alongside the importance of brushwork. Her subject will be landscapes, real and imagined. You can work from photo references of your choosing (maybe create your own set of watercolor vacation postcards), or try an imaginary landscape that is more process oriented.
Jeremy Miranda
Julie Marvin
Margaret Dwyer
Master figure painter Joshua Langstaff offers two new workshops; Mastering Flesh Tones in Oils (SA 13) and Figure Painting Intensive in Oils (SA 14), as well as continuing Representational Drawing (SA 11) and Classical Figure Drawing (SA 12). As many of you know, I am primarily interested in gaining skills depicting the figure and remain grateful that such a talented figure artist landed in our neighborhood.
Alice Carroll, who has been a stalwart jewelry instructor here since our early days, is so comfortable helping students work with torches and hand tools, eliminating the usual fears around working with sharp objects and fire. She continues to offer Jewelry & Metalsmithing (SA 22), a beginning intensive that covers the basics of using hand tools and the primary techniques of making jewelry and metal objects. Her class covers hot and cold connections, piercing, surface decoration, light forging, forming, and basic stone settings. More advanced students receive one on one help in applying advanced techniques to their designs.
Alice Carroll
Julie Marvin and Rebecca Emerson continue to grace the ceramics studio offering Handbuilding with Clay (SA 18- Julie Marvin), All Levels Wheel Work (SA 19) and Ceramic Exploration (SA 20 – Rebecca Emerson). We are also adding a Ceramic Studio Member Option (SA 21) for a monthly fee. It’s so nice to have a smoothly functioning ceramics studio run by passionate instructors.
Cheers,
Christopher
Cheers,
Christopher
