Wendy Artin
1963– · American painter of watercolor and charcoal
Wendy Artin (Newton, Massachusetts, 1963) is an American painter best known for her watercolors and charcoal drawings. Her figurative, classically rooted work explores the timeless interplay of light with architectural surfaces and the human body, placing her among contemporary painters who engage directly with the classical tradition.
She grew up in Newton and spent much of her childhood and youth travelling and living abroad, sketching streets, cafés and museums. In Rome she met her husband, Bruno Boschin, whose bookshop, the Libreria del Viaggiatore (The Bookshop of the Traveller), was the setting for their meeting. Her first important teacher was the artist Jean Patiky, then an art teacher at Hyde School in Newton Highlands. She studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and spent two years at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
Her loose, expressive sanguine watercolours of live models are perhaps her best-known works, through which she explores absence, beauty and the corporeal. Much of her output is based on ancient statues; her large monochrome watercolours of the Parthenon frieze have been shown in Rome, Boston and at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. She has also painted views of Rome, with its umbrella pines and ruins, as well as city walls and still lifes.
In 2012 she produced a series of watercolours after Greek and Roman statues to accompany Seamus Heaney's poems in Stone from Delphi. In 2023 she received the Arthur Ross Award from the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art. Her work is held in collections including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Boston Public Library.