Paintings made at kitchen tables, spare rooms and garages.

Hiroko Bell

Asheville, North Carolina

Hiroko paints with sumi ink and a single worn brush on handmade paper. She allows one attempt per sheet. Her botanical studies come from a small courtyard garden she has kept for thirty years.

Marguerite Alder

Driftless Region, Wisconsin

Marguerite paints the same three fields behind her house in every season and every weather. She works in watercolor on cold-press paper, usually outdoors, usually before eight in the morning. Twenty-two years as a hospice nurse taught her to notice light while it is still there.

Nell Osgood

Portland, Maine

Nell builds abstract acrylic panels in layers, sanding back between coats until the underpainting shows through like weather. She trained as a textile designer and still thinks in repeats, grids, and near-misses.

Sol

Bellingham, wa

Aubrey Finch

Athens, Georgia

Aubrey paints portraits of family members in oil, working from life over many short sittings. The results are quiet and a little unfinished at the edges, which is the point.

Delia Marchetti

Providence, Rhode Island

Delia paints gouache still lifes of whatever is on the counter at four in the afternoon — pears, a cracked cup, laundry waiting to be folded. Flat color, soft edges, no drama, deeply felt.