Our most recent workshop featured a very special guest, Samantha Testa from Painted Palettes. Her first question for our group was “Has anyone done watercolor painting before?” This was met by a communal sigh. Many of us had experienced unsupportive teachers in the past -- an elementary teacher saying we weren’t artistic or a middle school teacher telling us to focus on other subjects. As a recent graduate of art school myself, I knew the feeling of being discouraged by a teacher or peer. Through sharing our experiences, we bonded and faced our anxiety.

After a few hours with Sam’s guidance (and a few cocktails) I think we all came away from the workshop feeling accomplished, calm, and excited to keep practicing.

As we watched our paintings dry and waited to start using our pens and markers to write hand-lettered messages on top, we sipped from our inspired cocktails for the evening. The bloody mary is intended to be a breakfast drink because it “puts hair on the dog,” but it’s also a great drink to have to wind down your evening.

It was a busy night at the Colony Club, and as we walked from our crafting area upstairs to the bar on the main floor, we could hear all the commotion: strangers and friends speaking to each other in Portuguese; a feminist film series night with Mona Lisa Smile (which is coincidentally about art as well) playing in the background; random conversations over drinks and assorted cheese plates. Inspiration could be found everywhere.

Many of us had come from work earlier in the day, or were looking to calm down a bit midweek. Watercolors and hand-lettering required focus and patience, forced us to slow down and let the water flow on the page where it may, physically and symbolically showing us how to to let go. We learned about the history of a drink most of us have on the regular and learned that we’re all a lot more capable than we think.

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