Artists Open Studios Dates:
Artist will be demonstrating
Group Show: Coventry: Maple Brook Studio
Address: 950 Main St., Coventry, CT 06238
Show Dates: Nov. 27, 28, 29 & Dec.5, 6
EMOTIONAL REALISM:
Hoffman is a versatile artist who has spent her lifelong art career exploring various media.
She grew up in Manhattan and on Long Island, taking every art course available throughout her public schooling. After graduating from NYU with an art education degree, she taught fine arts for three years in one of NYC's junior high schools.
Hoffman moved to CT to earn a Master's Degree in Counseling Psychology and was hired as the director of art therapy at a private psychiatric institute (1975-1978). 3 1/2 years into this career, she realize she couldn't be an artist and an art therapist at the same time. Her third career, from which she retired in 2006, was as a middle school counselor. There she met her husband, Bill, a 7th-grade science teacher.
She lives in the house her husband grew up in. Hoffman's art studio is the in-law apartment Bill helped his father and brother build onto the 1880s home. This addition was built in 1963.
In her studio you will see a variety of her works:
Birch series on textured papers
Pen & Ink, Stone and Metal sculptures
Chinese brush paintings
Pyrography
Gourd sculpture
Forest Delights series
Open year-round by appointment:
call or text 860-916-4232
For as long as I can remember, I have been drawn to the quiet beauty of the natural world—the shifting light, the drama of the sky, the rhythm of trees, and those fleeting moments when an ordinary landscape becomes something almost otherworldly.
My work has always been a process of exploration and reinvention. Over the years I have worked in many media, continually following my curiosity wherever it leads. Today, I am especially captivated by the possibilities of watercolor and textured papers, where the surface itself becomes part of the painting.
Birch trees have become a recurring presence in my work. I return to them again and again, painting them through changing seasons and changing skies. Their slender trunks, luminous bark, and graceful irregularity offer an endlessly expressive subject. Yet the birches are often only the beginning. I am equally interested in the atmosphere surrounding them—the clouds, light, wind, and silence that transform a landscape into a state of mind.
The textured papers I use bring another dimension to this exploration. Their fibers and translucent surfaces interact with the paint, creating unexpected marks and allowing the paper itself to suggest elements of the landscape. I welcome these accidents and discoveries; they are part of the conversation between the materials and my hand.
Ultimately, my paintings are less about depicting a particular place than about capturing a feeling: the sense of wonder that comes when we pause long enough to notice the beauty, mystery, and quiet energy of the world around us.














