Artist Jessica Shaffer plein air painting at Beavertail State Park, Jamestown, R.I.

Do you love coastal Rhode Island? Then you are in the right place!

I truly love where I live.  Our little ocean state is best place to spend your summer days on the water and enjoy walking the beaches and rocky shoreline.   I paint to share this wonderful sense of place and connection with the sea.

Do you love walking the beach with the gulls crying and waves rolling in? Me too!  My paintings capture the light and atmosphere that makes an afternoon by the sea so memorable.  

So if you are looking to bring home the calm feeling of coastal living, then I have you covered!   I create new works weekly and share them on social media and through my newsletter.  Have a favorite local view that you would love to see on your wall everyday?  I also create custom artwork!

Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing sensations. – Paul Cezanne

Fine artist Jessica Shaffer has practiced en plein air watercolor landscape painting for thirty years, and began painting in oils five years ago.   Her landscape paintings are based in realism, with an impressionistic quality that captures the fleeting nature of light.  As an outdoors enthusiast residing in South Kingstown, Rhode Island, Jessica specializes in plein air painting the beautiful Rhode Island coastal landscape.  During her travels as an ocean engineer, she painted watercolor sketches shoreside and at-sea across the country.  Jessica retired from engineering in 2022 to focus on her career as a professional artist and enjoys hiking and painting across the country.  

Associate Member, American Impressionist Society

Juried Exhibits:

  • 2023 Visiting Artist March-April, Spring Bull Gallery, Newport, R.I.
  • 2022 Spring Fling Exhibit, Spring Bull Gallery, Newport, R.I.
  • Narragansett Arts Festival
  • Scituate Arts Festival
  • 2020 March into Art Exhibit, Wickford Art Association

Education:

  • B.S. Ocean Engineering, University of Rhode Island, 1995
  • M.S. Oceanography, Graduate School of Oceanography, U.R.I. 1998

Recent Workshops Attended:

  • Fearless Flowers Master Class with Birgit O’Connor
  • Desert Landscapes with Birgit O’Connor
  • The Architecture of Light – Perspective in Color with Thomas Schaller, Gloucester, MA
  • Painting the Plein Air Landscape, in Oil with Don Demers, Chatham, MA
  • Color Relativity with Kami Mendlik, Landgrove, VT
  • Rocks, Water and Waves at Beavertail with Trish Hurley, Jamestown, RI
  • Painting Sky and Water  with Kami Mendlik
  • Painting Trees with Kami Mendlik
  • Nature’s Elements with Christine Lashley