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The Seacoast Artist Association is a group of artists and people interested in art, based in the seacoast area of New Hampshire. Our gallery, located at 130 Water Street in downtown Exeter, is open:

Wednesday-Saturday 10am – 5pm
Sunday 10am – 2pm

We offer new body of work and theme show exhibitions every month by local artists, public art receptions every second Friday evening, classes and demonstrations, and scholarship programs.

See About to learn more about our all-volunteer non-profit organization.

October Events

Richard and Michael met in 1988 and began working together to advance origami as fine art. Michael has worked as an origami artist, papermaker, and author for over 41 years. He was trained as a biologist and finds strong inspiration from the natural world. Richard graduated from Cornell, where he studied systems ecology and landscape architecture design. Together, they co-founded Origamido Studio, a teaching, resource center, and art gallery for handmade paper and folded paper art. They have authored over 70 books, kits, and video publications about their origami designs, paper arts, and hand paper-making. Richard and Michael also host paper-making workshops in Massachusetts during the summer and collaborate with other artists. Their work can be found around the world, from Carrousel du Louvre, in Paris, Tucson, Florida, Salzburg, Massachusetts, California, and other wonderful places!

Richard and Michael will visit SAA on October 12 to present an overview of origami as a modern, international, expressive art form. Michael will share a history, and Richard will talk more about their handmade paper operations. If you would like to hear more, there are two films: “Between the Folds” by Vanessa Gould and “Origami in the Garden: The Film” by Barbara Bentree. Check them out on PBS Independent Lens, Between the Folds” on YouTube. You will be amazed! Then come and meet them here at SAA!

This event is free and open to the public.

I came to painting relatively late in life and found significant joy in the creative process and its outcomes. I feel that the role of the artist is to capture the spiritual nature of the landscape and elicit the same spiritual sense in the viewer. This is not a new notion. George Inness and the tonalist painters of the late 19th century clearly painted in this context.

Few of my paintings are of actual places. Rather, they are studio creations based on atmospheric landscapes remembered or imagined. They often have a sense of familiarity about them and, when successful, draw the viewer into a spiritual feeling of peaceful solitude. These often involve landscapes and nearby water with sky reflections and distant horizon views. Many are at the day’s beginning or end and at season’s change.

I paint exclusively with oils on canvas, sometimes using photo references as a prompt. My typical process is to start painting and let the imagery emerge. Primarily self-taught, I’ve studied with Dennis Sheehan, America’s foremost living tonalist painter. I hope these paintings evoke the spiritual connection to landscape in you that I find in making them.

I paint what I love. Sometimes that’s something I see, and sometimes that morphs into something else – particularly if I let it sit in my mind for a while, and eat my vegetables. I love a good moody day – a little fog, a little storm coming, and (of course) golden hour and magic hour (dawn and dusk). I love how color and texture in paint make me feel. I love painting en plein air (outdoors, on location) – it focuses my mind and connects me to the source. Those paintings often lead to other paintings.

My goal is to reduce the image to its essence. I typically use pretty big chip brushes, but mostly everything but brushes – palette knives, putty knives, silicone bowl scrapers, squeegees, rubber rollers – whatever I can get my hands on that will make the mark or texture I want. I really enjoy pushing paint around until it feels like the story I’m trying to tell.

Art is my third career. The first was restaurant management, which I was really bad at. The second was architecture, which I was really good at. I’m now full time art, and starting to hit my stride. I started painting in 2016, and have studied primarily via weeklong workshops with some top notch artists.

Theme Show
October 2025
Mystery Kits

It’s time for our Annual Mystery Kits Exhibit! Kits are assembled by members of the SAA and sold at the gallery a few months before the exhibit. Each kit con-tains the same supplies. You may use as many of these supplies including the packaging it comes in as your creation demands. The Mystery Kit Project is a key fundraiser for the SAA Scholarship program. Each year area high school seniors, planning to further their educa-tion in the arts, may apply to be awarded a scholarship. All proceeds from this project go directly into the scholarship fund.

Monthly theme shows are open to all artists – see our SAA 2025 Theme Show brochure (PDF) and entry form (PDF).

Second Friday Reception
October 10, 2025 5-7pm
Music by: Jerry Short

Before settling in New England, Short played his folk, country, and blues around the US and internationally, including a three-year stint performing in the USO. His love of bluegrass comes from his native state of Kentucky, and the rockin’ blues from Gary, Indiana where his family moved when he was 10 years old.

Receptions for our monthly body of work and theme shows are FREE and open to the public. Refreshments will be served. Meet your local artists!

Coming in November