These works are available for purchase as fine art prints on archival quality fine art paper or on canvas. Some of the originals are also available. Please inquire if you are interested in purchasing original art.
Colleen R. North (born 1951) is the first born child of William & Colleen North of Belleville, NJ. Her dad attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, after serving in the U.S. Army, and as a toddler she attended his art college graduation sitting on her mother’s lap. As a bobby-soxer in high school, her mom worked at Hahne & Co. department store in Newark, NJ, designing window displays, and hand-tinted photographic portraits at a portrait studio. It was in this environment that her creative seeds were sown.
Throughout her childhood during the fifties and sixties in Monmouth County, New Jersey, she lived 20 miles from the Jersey Shore which accounts for the influence of the beach on her creative development. She spent many hours walking the sandy shore and brought home shells and driftwood that made their way into collages and art projects. The Middletown Township public school’s arts education provided the opportunity to experiment with lots of mediums including pastel, oil paint, paper mache, block print and photography. As a senior high school student, Colleen entered a local photography contest hosted by a mall and won first place and $100. Looking for ways to continue her art instruction after graduation, she was offered the opportunity to freelance as a press photographer by the Woodbridge News Tribune and New York Daily News photographers who came to cover her win for their papers. She ultimately worked as a staff photographer at the Newark Star-Ledger.
She gave up pursuit of an art career when she married, started a business and had a family, until time and space allowed for additional art instruction. During the late 80’s she took courses in advertising and graphic design at Parsons School of Design in NYC, and studied portrait painting with Enrique Flores-Galbis at the NJ Center for Visual Arts in Summit, NJ. She is mostly self-taught.
A friendship with a Montclair, NJ, sign painter Matthew Benneducci-McGrath provided the opportunity to paint outdoor signage for the Presby Iris Gardens in Upper Montclair, NJ, and a series of Essex County park entrance signs for Brookdale Park highlighting their famous cherry blossoms.
Inspired by her father, William North (1927-2011), who painted in Southwest Florida in retirement 1990 to 2011, she started painting again when she moved from New Jersey to Fort Myers in 2012. In January 2018 she displayed a series of paintings showing the beaches at Delnore-Wiggins Pass State Park in Naples, Florida, at the 20th Anniversary Wildlife & Wetlands Art Show (started by her father) as a tribute to the many paintings he created there. A solo show at the Alliance for the Arts in Fort Myers showcased Colleen’s paintings alongside prints of her father’s paintings. Now residing in Hobe Sound, Colleen is getting to know another beach on Florida’s Treasure Coast, with plenty of opportunities in retirement to dive deeper into the mediums that spark her imagination: painting in oils, watercolors and on fabric; she relishes each day living and creating in this Florida paradise.
