Jean Richards

The shop

Take one home

Every card is finished by hand, which makes each one a small original rather than a copy. People tell Jean they frame them.

Most loved

Art Cards — Small

$8 each

Hand-finished original art cards. Blank inside, so they work as a card or as a small framed piece. Sold singly or as a set.

Order cards

Art Cards — Large

$10 each

The same hand-finished work at a larger size. Popular for framing, and the ones people buy in fours and fives.

Order cards

Fine-Art Prints

Coming soon

Archival prints of Jean's favorite paintings, in several sizes. Join the list and you'll hear the day the first run is ready.

Tell me when

One of one

Original Paintings

From $75

Original watercolors. Small studies start at $75; larger framed works are priced individually. When one sells it is gone — each is the only one of its kind.

See what's available

Workshops & lessons

Learn to paint with Jean

Jean has been teaching for most of her life — twenty-three first and second graders at a time, women in a Connecticut prison, and both of her great-granddaughters, who started at six.

"My dream is to travel, teach, and be paid to do it."

Beginners are the point. No experience, no supplies, no talent required — that is genuinely the easiest group to teach.
Small groups. In New Bern, or at your church, club, library or shop.
Children welcome. Jean has taught six-year-olds to paint for decades.
Traveling workshops. Jean will come to you. Ask about dates and distance.

Ask about a workshop

Watercolor of a Mediterranean hillside and rooftops at sunset by Jean Richards

Watercolor of purple and white pansies in a garden bed by Jean Richards

Paint & travel

Paint where I have painted

Look through the gallery and you will find Tuscany, a Paris street, a Mediterranean hillside. Jean has been painting her way around the world for years. The next step is simple — take a few people with her.

"My dream is to travel, teach, and be paid to do it."

Close to home

Eastern North Carolina

The Neuse, the Pamlico, downtown New Bern. A morning session, lunch somewhere good, an afternoon painting on the water. No passport, no plane.

Already in the gallery

Italy & France

Tuscan hills and a Paris street corner are hanging in her portfolio right now. She has painted them once. She would happily do it again with company.

Warm winters

Florida & the coast

Light that watercolor loves, and a short flight in February when New Bern is grey.

Your idea

Somewhere you have always wanted

Groups form around a place somebody names. If you have one, say so — that is genuinely how these begin.

How a painting trip actually works

One

You book your own travel

Your flight, your room, your way — whether that is an airline's own site, Booking.com, Airbnb or Vrbo. You are never buying a package from us.

Two

Jean brings the teaching

Sessions on location, materials list sent in advance, and beginners genuinely welcome. You pay her for the instruction and nothing else.

Three

Small groups, real places

A handful of people, somewhere worth painting, and dinner together afterwards. Jean cares about the food nearly as much as the light.

Four

You go home with paintings

Not photographs. Actual work, made by you, of a place you actually stood.

Tell Jean where you would go

The artist

Signed original, Jean Richards

Jean has been painting since 1998 and teaching far longer than that.

Before the brushes there was a whole life: a radiological technician, an office manager, the owner of a florist shop and flower cart she built herself. She trained rooms of up to three thousand people in a course she called Selling With Integrity — a title that tells you most of what you need to know about her.

She has taught art to twenty-three first and second graders at once, taught arts and crafts to women in prison, served as a caring minister at her cathedral, and volunteered as a victims advocate for the Denver District Attorney's Office. Her community named her Volunteer of the Year twice.

Now she paints butterflies and wildflowers in New Bern, North Carolina, and teaches anyone who asks — including her two great-granddaughters, who both started at six.

Painting since 1998 Art teacher, grades 1–2 Chamber Volunteer of the Year, 2003 YMCA Volunteer of the Year, 2010 Dragon Fly Art Studio

A life, in order

The long way to a paintbrush

Jean did not start as an artist. She arrived at it the long way — through hospitals, an air-conditioning company, a flower cart, a classroom and a prison. This is the short version. The long one is still being written.

1957

Sheridan, Wyoming

Graduated high school, then a year at the University of Oregon Medical School in the Department of Radiology.

The medical years

Radiological technician, medical technologist

Worked as a technologist and medical assistant, then as an office manager and billing specialist for family physicians, internists, pediatricians, allergists and general surgeons. She learned to run other people's offices before she ran her own.

Carrier · United Technologies

She wrote her own job description

Technical assistant to the sales engineers at Carrier Air Conditioning. The position she held in the Denver field office did not exist until she created it — she wrote the job description and the pay category herself, and United Technologies adopted them.

Wild Flower

Florist shop and flower cart, sole proprietor

Her own business, start to finish: buying, design, delivery and sales. Flowers came before paint, and it shows in the work.

1980s – 1990s

Selling with integrity

Her company ranked her among the top thirty skin-care retailers in the country, and she went on to teach audiences of twenty-five to three thousand. She named the course Selling With Integrity. Ask her about the ranking and she will change the subject; ask her about the title and she will talk all afternoon.

Licensed

Series 6, and four lines of insurance

Life, health, disability and long-term-care insurance with Mass Mutual and Penn Mutual, certified and licensed. Later she recruited, trained and installed VOIP systems for 5 Linx Corporation. She has never been afraid of a new thing.

1998

She picks up a brush

Dragon Fly Art Studio. Butterflies, wildflowers, landscapes — and the beginning of the work on this site.

2003 · 2010

Volunteer of the Year, twice

Named Community Volunteer of the Year by the Glendale Chamber of Commerce, Rookie of the Year for the YMCA Strong Kids Campaign, and YMCA Volunteer of the Year.

Now

New Bern, North Carolina

Painting, teaching anyone who asks, and planning the workshops she has wanted to travel and teach for years.

Ministry & service

Where she spent herself

Jean's résumé lists more unpaid work than paid. That is not an accident, and it is the part of her story she is least likely to tell you about herself. It is here because somebody ought to say it, not because she asked.

The church

Caring Minister, St. John's Episcopal Cathedral
President, St. James Episcopal Church, Glastonbury, Connecticut
Bishop's Council for Women, Connecticut
Sunday school teacher, Connecticut
Camp Fire leader, Connecticut and Colorado

The community

Victims advocate for elder abuse, Denver District Attorney's Office
Art teacher to twenty-three first and second graders, St. Andrews Learning Center, Denver
Arts and crafts teacher, Connecticut women's prison
AA program volunteer, federal prison
Board of Directors, co-chair — Glendale YMCA Strong Kids Campaign
Election volunteer and early-voting supervisor, 2008 — for both parties

Family

The next two painters

Gia and Malina

Jean's two great-granddaughters both started painting with her at around six years old — the same age she starts every child she teaches. She will tell you that six-year-olds are the easiest students she has ever had, because nobody has told them yet that they cannot do it.

Teaching children is not a sideline to Jean's work. It is most of the reason she still paints. Four generations in, the brushes are still moving.

Why any of this is online

Jean did not ask for a website. The point of one is simple: paintings outlast the painter, and a card somebody framed twenty years ago is still on a wall somewhere. This is just a way of making sure the work can still be found after the studio is quiet — and that whoever finds it knows whose hand made it.

Everything here was made by one person, slowly, on purpose.

"Jean is an encouragement to everyone around her — a light and a fire, for God and for other people."

David Hahn · Hahn Technologies Corp

Small paintings,
made to be kept.