This exhibit was conceived of by Nancy Stewart Matin. An extremely active and well respected Canton artist, she paints in bright, lively colors that reflect her own brilliant and vivid personality. Nancy is a signature member of the Ohio Watercolor Society, and her work resides in the permanent collections of several Stark County institutions including the Massillon Museum, North Canton Library, and the Canton Museum of Art, where she serves on the board of trustees. A self-taught artist, she has developed an affinity for the “pour technique,” a process by which watercolor paint is mixed thinly with water and then poured through various filters.

Although the Massillon Museum’s painting collection represents a host of local and regional artwork dating mostly to the twentieth-century, it extends in time and geography to include Italian Renaissance, seventeenth-century Dutch and nineteenth-century folk art paintings. Watercolor and water-based media became more widely accepted in the nineteenth-century for finished works of art in the Western world, having predominantly been considered an apt medium for sketches. Artistic traditions in the Eastern world, on the other hand, have been employing watercolor for centuries.