LONGMEADOW — Lori Rapuano sees beauty in the world around her. At the Richard Salter Storrs Library this month, visitors can see how she recreates that beauty in vivid watercolors.
Much of Rapuano’s work focuses on landscapes and nature motifs, capturing crisp lines, deep shadows and detailed reflections. She focuses her craft on painting scenes and moments that are meaningful to her.
“I would say they tell a story. The moment of inspiration is just an image, but there is a story. It’s usually somewhere I’ve traveled or visited on vacation.”
While her inspiration comes from the world around her, her techniques and skills have been developed over her lifetime.“I try to attend workshops with well-known painters once a year,” Rapuano said, but her favorite teacher is her mother. Rapuano said she originally learned to paint with her grandmother, before taking recreation and college classes. “I took a break for a while when I had my family,” she said. Eventually, she began painting while spending time with her mother, who taught classes.
Painting is not the only way Rapuano works with art. She is also a semi-retired printmaker. She began working in the field after she found a printer to duplicate one of her paintings and fell in love with printmaking. She said it provides something that the artist can use to offer people a more affordable solution if they cannot afford the original, or allow the painter to keep the artwork, even after selling the painting.
Over the years, Rapuano said she has “dabbled” in various mediums, but her favorite remains watercolors. “I have a lot of paintings. Prolific is probably not the right word. I paint maybe four or five paintings a year.” That is partly because each painting takes about 20-30 hours to complete. Rapuano takes photos of sights and items that catch her eye, creatively. From there, she painstakingly translates the image into a painting. She said she enjoys the “attention to detail” that is needed to make a painting come to life.
“Most people have the idea that watercolors are thin and transparent, and you can whip it up easily. I don’t paint that way. I layer the colors to build intensity,” Rapuano said.
The artist said she hopes people walk away from her exhibit appreciating her style of watercolor. “I want to share the awe that I see in everyday things. When it captures me, I want to share that.”
The exhibit in the Storrs Library Betty Ann Low Meeting Room runs through Jan. 3, 2025. To see more of Rapuano’s work, visit lorisartandprintmaking.com.
