Ava Drutman, a primarily self-taught artist, has been painting and drawing since childhood but has been reticent to share her work with others. She has worked with oil, charcoal, pencil, pastels, and watercolor, but over the years has come to embrace watercolor as her medium of choice. Most recently, she has been experimenting with watercolor paints and pencil on canvas, and she is also using them to embellish her own photographs, which she prints on watercolor paper. Her works are a beautiful melding of body and nature. 

Throughout her young life, Ava was singled out to display her creations, however, she felt her artistic perspective was something so personal that she did not feel comfortable sharing it with others. Although she began college as an Art major, she changed her major and altered her life course to become a teacher of English, which was also her passion. This choice ended her formal training. 

Over the years, she would take a Life Drawing or Watercolor class; however most of the time, she painted and drew for herself and rarely showed it to anyone.  It was during a Life Drawing class that she experienced a perspective that has become the focus of her work: the intertwining of the human body and nature. She recalls, “I was sketching a model, and I kept seeing mountain ranges within her body. During my next visit to the studio, the hips of another model were transformed into a mountain as I studied her shape. And soon the commonality of these images was inseparable."   Most recently, her experimentation has led her to use watercolor paints and pencils on canvas and to transform her photographs of trees, which she has printed on watercolor paper.

As a septuagenarian, and with the encouragement of her dear friend, Judy Marano, she is sharing her work at the Rye Free Reading Room.