Evelyn Dunphy

Colour in Your Life featured artist Evelyn Dunphy appeared on Colour In Your Life Season Twenty (20)

Read a little bit about the artist here, and support our site by joining and watching the episode below.

Evelyn Dunphy made art of many kinds throughout her life, including a commission for the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Painting was always the thing she was “going to do one day”. Finally, Evelyn took the plunge into watercolour, and from that day onward, she has been passionate about the medium. She remembers feeling anxious that  “I had waited too long, there will not be enough time to learn everything I want to know.  One day I heard just as clear as a bell, ‘you have all the time you need'”.  She has never looked back. In fact, this has turned out to be a wonderful asset, especially for her students. It can be a life-changing moment for people to realise that it is never too late to start, and to succeed.

Evelyn Dunphy has traveled far and wide. She painted the breathtaking mountains and countryside of Japan and climbed Mt. Fuji, traveled through the bush country and Victoria Falls in Livingstone, Zambia, painted in the American Southwest and visited  Europe, India and Sri Lanka where she climbed Sirigiya and visited the famed hilltop city of Kandy, the last capital of the ancient kings’ era of Sri Lanka.

Sailing on a freighter up the coast of Labrador to the northernmost settlement of Nain, painting every day on the ship as they went in and out of the many small outports was one of Evelyn Dunphy’s favorite trips. In Newfoundland’s Gros Morne World Heritage Site she took a boat into the fjord where cliffs tower 2500 feet, black bears fish from the shore, and hiked over the tablelands.

Evelyn Dunphy has become known for her passion for preserving wilderness areas of Maine. “During the campaign to save Katahdin Lake from development, a friend commented that using my work in this way was the finest kind of activism. That was my first personal experience of knowing that one person really can make a difference”.

Supporting children’s hunger programs is another of Evelyn Dunphy’s passions. She regularly holds art events where a percentage of sales is donated to the local Backpack program, which sends food home with children on Friday afternoon so that they have something in the house to tide them over the weekend.

To her surprise, Evelyn Dunphy discovered that she thrives on teaching. From a class with schoolchildren in an orphanage in Kitwe, Zambia to exquisite villas in Tuscany and medieval towns in Europe, Evelyn attracts a community of artists, some who travel with her year after year, becoming life long friends. She has workshops in West Bath, Maine, as well as at the site of Frederic Church’s camp on the shore of Lake Millinocket. In recognition of Church’s association with Maine, Dunphy was invited to teach at Church’s home on the Hudson River, the Olana State Historic Site in Hudson, New York. She has also led workshops in France, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Cuba, Canada, and Belgium. A workshop in the French Alps is scheduled for August 2019.

A signature member of the New England Watercolor Society and juried member of the International Guild of Realism, Evelyn Dunphy’s paintings have been exhibited and given awards in many national and international watercolor exhibitions. A full listing is on the CV page of her website.

Evelyn Dunphy is recognized in Maine for her paintings of Mount Katahdin and being the first visiting artist in the history of Baxter State Park, a 200,000+ acre wilderness sanctuary.

She is the first artist to receive the National Resource Council of Maine’s People’s Choice Award for her contribution to conservation in the state.

You can contact Evelyn about her art tips or art techniques directly via her website at evelyndunphy.com

Episode: S20E13

Original Air Date: 8th November 2019

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