ABOUT THE COVER ARTIST Tina Siart Boylan

Tina Siart Boylan's paintings have a soft, warm, almost dream-like quality. Hydrangeas, sculpted figures in gardens, birch trees, sky expanses, water, and moonlight scenes are among the subjects she enjoys painting. She also has painted images on furniture — like a chair showing a robin's nest cradling eggs. &emsp;&emsp;"I like to paint, particularly for the wall space," she says, explaining that she strives to complement the walls where paintings will hang, when possible. A client may commission a piece and send her a paint chip of the wall color so she can have a small amount of that color mixed to blend into the painting. &emsp;&emsp;She initially paints her canvas orange and, once dry, creates her scenes and images upon that base, from which she draws warmth and light into her work. &emsp;&emsp;Boylan credits a middle school teacher with advising her to work with her whole arm. She starts with a large brush, sweeping colors onto the canvas using broad strokes, later switching to smaller brushes for edgework when painting detailed images, like the statues. &emsp;&emsp;"I don't like to have a lot of harsh lines in my work," she notes, explaining the challenge of blending the styles. &emsp;&emsp;After walking away from a painting-in-progress and returning to study it with fresh eyes, she notices subtle features that emerge, like a dark spot suggesting a rock in a stream or a hint of an urn in a garden. These may represent something that is actually part of a familiar scene. &emsp;&emsp;Her large, airy studio is full of sunlight, and wide wood planks, her easels, acrylics, brushes and other supplies set up in a corner where lamps are directed on the works in progress. A coziness warms the studio, despite its size. &emsp;&emsp;In late January, many paintings, some still unfinished, were spread around her studio. For February and March, Boylan was preparing a new body of works to display at The Restaurant at Burdick's in Walpole, New Hampshire. Before beginning them, she photographed Burdick's walls, wanting her paintings to suit the background wall colors: gold, pink and sage green. &emsp;&emsp;This project might seem like a tall order for an artist who works full-time as the chief financial officer for Frank W. Whitcomb Construction and Vermont Blacktop Corporation. Yet her love of painting, working with numbers and staying busy contribute to the positive energy she brings to her life. &emsp;&emsp;"Painting is my therapy. It keeps things in balance for me," she says of this activity that allows her to decompress. &emsp;&emsp;Art captured her interest in her early school years, and she won contests with work submitted by her teachers, even having one that hung in Carnegie Hall. Scholarships and donors helped her attend Principia Boarding School in St. Louis, Missouri, and she continued at Principia College, a small liberal arts college in Elsah, Illinois. Her wide range of interests led her to study biology, ornithology and independent art classes before graduating with a sociology degree. &emsp;&emsp;After graduation, she says she learned about accounting and finance from wonderful mentors throughout various jobs. &emsp;&emsp;"Everything is intertwined in my life," she says of how one path was a bridge to another. &emsp;&emsp;Boylan's aunt, Patricia Ide, an accomplished artist with a gallery on Cape Cod, was a huge inspiration to her painting pursuit. She learned the Finnish term, sisu, from Ide, which means resilience and perseverance. &emsp;&emsp;In addition, her father strongly believed in her talent as an artist, especially when he saw her two paintings of people she encountered during a six-month college class in India. &emsp;&emsp;He offered to pay her mortgage for six months if she would devote herself full-time to her art and complete two new paintings for him each week. Following the last month, he surprised her by returning all her paintings, giving her enough to do her first show. &emsp;&emsp;She has since compiled an extensive collection of work, and often their creative titles have underlying meanings for her. A line she wrote while still a teenager in 1977 captures this aspect: &emsp;&emsp;"… to me, a hidden metaphor, a theory; to others, only lines, shapes, colors; to you, just another clue … maybe." &emsp;&emsp;Boylan's parents passed away within a year of each other when she was in her thirties, and she lost her brother eight years later. Her subsequent paintings, "Those left behind" and "Goodbyes in Bloom," hold special significance. &emsp;&emsp;At that point, she shifted from watercolors to acrylics, her current medium of choice. &emsp;&emsp;She enjoys creating thought-provoking scenes that may start conversations. Titles may also have this effect. &emsp;&emsp;"I just like to paint. I don't have formal training. I want someone to enjoy my work because they enjoy it, not because of a pedigree behind it. The accomplishment is when a painting speaks to the person," says Boylan. &emsp;&emsp;To see more of Tina Siart Boylan's paintings, turn to the Farm Directory section of this magazine, or visit fineartamerica.com/profiles/tinasiart-boylan.html and her Facebook page @tinasiartboylanSiArtDesigns/