Artist Satina Tolman loves water, so it’s no surprise that she excels at watercolor painting.
Tolman’s artwork is now on display at City Hall until the end of August, featuring pieces she’s created since she learned watercolor four years ago.
It was just a one-hour introductory online course that propelled her into this new medium as a creative outlet.
“I just became fascinated with it,” Tolman said. “It was fun learning how the water and the paint work together. It was 2020, when life was crazy and chaotic, and watercolor brought me peace and joy.”
The mother of four has been an artist since high school, using pencil and acrylic as her medium, but now watercolor is her preferred method.
“Recently I tried to do an acrylic painting and it’s so different than watercolor that I realized I really don’t like (acrylic),” she said. “I don’t like the way the paint doesn’t flow and doesn’t blend as well.”
It makes sense, though. Painting with water is like painting with nature, which seems to be at the core of who Tolman is, and objects of nature are what she most often paints.
“I seem to be drawn to nature,” she said. “I really like flowers and scenery, mountains and trees, things like that. I’m really drawn to water in a lot of areas of my life. Water brings me peace. I love to go to the ocean and just sit and watch the waves for hours.”
A striking image in her collection at City Hall includes “Sunset Solitude,” which is her rendition of a photograph she found, depicting the silhouette of a girl in a small boat dipping her fingers in the water while the sun sets in the background.
“I’ve been that girl in the boat that’s just been entranced with the water and enjoying the peace of the sunset,” Tolman said.
The artist has been known to offer watercolor lessons, and will do commissioned pieces. Anyone interested may contact her via email at [email protected] using the subject line, “Art Inquiry.”
Raised in North Dakota, she moved to Oregon some time ago with her husband, Nathan, and the pair landed in Sweet Home almost 13 years ago. They live on the lake. She loves the outdoors, spending time with such activities as hiking and paddle boarding.
Tolman expresses her creative side through other outlets, as well, such as baking and writing poetry, but she’s also known around town as something of a playwright for her contribution to the community with “The Innkeepers,” a Christmas story that explores the perspectives of the innkeepers who turned Mary and Joseph away on the night of Jesus’ birth.
It was a play she originally wrote for her church, she said, but the story has since been written as a book, and Tolman is turning out the play into an annual production for the city.