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About Deborah Hiatt

After attending the University of Chicago and Macalester College, I graduated from Northeastern University Law School in 1977 and practiced law for the next 15 years (with a year and a half hiatus traveling in Latin America.) Except for 2 years in a small Boston firm, my work was all in public interest; in the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division and several Legal Aid offices including legal services for the Cape and Islands. In 986 I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and, when my son arrived in 1991, I recognized that my health required that I stop practicing law. I didn’t know what I would do next but I knew that it would have to have color.

Soon I stumbled upon a beginners watercolor class at the New Art Center in Newton, MA. A few years later I submitted a painting of the sun-dappled front porch of an Oak Bluffs campground cottage to the Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Far’s amateur watercolor competition. I was stunned to win first prize; this award played a real role in helping me commit quite seriously- and happily- to painting with watercolor.

I continued to study with various teachers at the New Art Center and then, for two years, with Joel Janowitz in Boston. I’ve taken a variety of watercolor classes on Martha’s Vineyard as well, including MVAA classes taught by Ned Reade. For the past several years, I have enrolled, and will continue to enroll, during the school year in a New Art Center studio course taught by Roberta Paul called “Contemporary Painting”. Roberta is a good friend as are several of the other participating artists; the social connections and the feedback I receive in this class make it an important time of my week.

Along with two factually members, I was selected to exhibit my work in a February, 2014 show at the New Art Center. And last summer, I received the Rose Treat honorarium at the MVAA All-Island Art Show.