Simone Davis

I taught art to kindergarten through eighth grade for seventeen years, and I still think the best part of any class is the moment someone says I cannot draw and then proves themselves wrong. I left the classroom to paint more, and I show my own work at small galleries in Bloomfield and Montclair.

With older adults I usually start with collage. It takes no drawing skill at all, and you can use things that matter to you, old postcards, magazine pages, a church bulletin, sheet music. From there we move into acrylic painting on small canvases. I bring everything, set up a plastic cloth on your dining table, and clean up before I go. If someone wants to paint the garden from the porch, we take the easel outside.

I grew up in Bloomfield and never left. My studio is a converted sunroom, my teenagers think my playlist is embarrassing, and I am at the Glen Ridge flea market most spring weekends hunting for frames.