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Saturday, Oct 10 “Hopper’s Nyack 'Flash Sketch MobTM'” Date/Time TBA Lecture: Plein Air Painting in Truro Saturday, Oct 17 Opening Reception: Susan Chen Saturday, Oct 17 Plein-Air Family Workshop: Nyack Memorial Park Sunday, Oct 18 Plein-Air Adult Workshop Oct 14-16 “Would be Artist” Family Walking Tours |
Saturday, October 10, 2026, 10:00-2:00p
“Hopper's Nyack ‘Flash Sketch Mob™’”
“Hopper's Nyack ‘Flash Sketch Mob™’”
Led by Bill Batson,* participants will create dynamic and interpretive new views of Nyack. Centered around the locations from Edward Hopper House’s Walking Tour, artworks will be created en masse by artists of all skill levels that capture the streetscape, places, sights and people of the village. This project is rooted in the idea that Edward Hopper artistically responded to his environment capturing both the history and contemporary experience of what he saw - so we encourage you to capture the environment through your own creative contemporary lens, too!
Participants will first PRE-REGISTER online, and then check in at 10:00a in the Garden at the Edward Hopper House Museum to receive a location assignment, then will disperse with their own art-making materials to sketch in downtown Nyack and around Hopper's neighborhood. Participants will return to the Museum by 1:00-2:00p to scan and share artwork.
Participants will first PRE-REGISTER online, and then check in at 10:00a in the Garden at the Edward Hopper House Museum to receive a location assignment, then will disperse with their own art-making materials to sketch in downtown Nyack and around Hopper's neighborhood. Participants will return to the Museum by 1:00-2:00p to scan and share artwork.
PRE-REGISTRATION: EHH Member: $10 pp; Public: $15pp; Household Members: $20 (up to 4 persons); Families: $25 (up to 4 persons)
Pre-registration preferred; limited registration day-of.
*This event is modeled on the Flash Sketch Mob™ of 2012 and 2015 conceived and organized by Bill Batson.
Click here for Frequently Asked Questions and more participant details!
Pre-registration preferred; limited registration day-of.
*This event is modeled on the Flash Sketch Mob™ of 2012 and 2015 conceived and organized by Bill Batson.
Click here for Frequently Asked Questions and more participant details!
Date/Time TBA
LECTURE:
Plein Air Painting in Truro
at Edward Hopper House Museum
LECTURE:
Plein Air Painting in Truro
at Edward Hopper House Museum
Members: $10; Public: $15. Limited to 25
Saturday, October 17, 3:00-5:30pm
OPENING RECEPTION:
Susan Chen: Rooms by the Sea
at Edward Hopper House Museum
OPENING RECEPTION:
Susan Chen: Rooms by the Sea
at Edward Hopper House Museum
Saturday, October 17, 2026, 11:00a-3:00p
PLEIN AIR FAMILY PAINTING WORKSHOP
Nyack Memorial Park: 51 Piermont Avenue (park corner of Piermont and Depew), Nyack, NY 10960
Rain Date: Sunday, October 18, 11:00a-3:00p
PLEIN AIR FAMILY PAINTING WORKSHOP
Nyack Memorial Park: 51 Piermont Avenue (park corner of Piermont and Depew), Nyack, NY 10960
Rain Date: Sunday, October 18, 11:00a-3:00p
Families come to Memorial Park for an afternoon of family and children's art making with plein-air painting of landscapes and objects in nature with acrylic paints. Instruction will be in partnership with Creative Arts Workshop! Adult artists of all skill levels are invited to bring their own supplies and materials to paint outdoors at the Park or throughout Nyack.
Sunday, October 18, 2026
12;30 PM meetup, Class 1:00 PM – 5:00 PM
ADULT PLEIN AIR WORKSHOP
Co-taught by Susan Chen, Heidi Howard, and Susanna Coffey
Rain date: Sunday, October 25, 2026 (the following Sunday)
12;30 PM meetup, Class 1:00 PM – 5:00 PM
ADULT PLEIN AIR WORKSHOP
Co-taught by Susan Chen, Heidi Howard, and Susanna Coffey
Rain date: Sunday, October 25, 2026 (the following Sunday)
This intensive afternoon workshop in Nyack offers a RARE opportunity to study en plein air under the guidance of THREE distinguished contemporary artists: Susan Chen, Heidi Howard, and Susanna Coffey. Whether you are looking to refine your outdoor painting technique or energize your studio practice into nature, this workshop provides tailored instruction, dynamic and expressive strategies, and an encouraging setting.
Pricing: General Public: $250 / Members: $200
Pre-Registration Deadline: Wednesday, October 7, 2026, 5 pm
Capacity: Capped at 20 people
Supplies:
Click here for parking information in Nyack.
- 12:30 PM: Meet at Edward Hopper House Museum after lunch
- 1:00 PM - 4:00 PM: Outdoor painting class
- 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM: Students share their work with the group (mini critique) with drinks in the Museum Garden
- Total duration: 4.5 hours
Pricing: General Public: $250 / Members: $200
Pre-Registration Deadline: Wednesday, October 7, 2026, 5 pm
Capacity: Capped at 20 people
Supplies:
- Students bring their own painting supplies
- Susan, Heidi & Susanna to provide a materials shopping checklist for students to refer to ahead of time
Click here for parking information in Nyack.
Susan Chen: Kettle Pond,
2026,
Oil on linen,
20” x 24”,
Photo Credit: JSP Art Photography
SUSAN CHEN (American, b. 1992, Hong Kong SAR) is an artist and oil painter living and working in New York City. Her painting practice — initially rooted in portraiture and figuration — expanded in recent years to include en plein air landscapes, a body of work that grew out of spending summers with her husband's multigenerational family on Cape Cod. In taking up landscape painting — a centuries-long American art-historical tradition — Chen questions her own lineage within it, and the resulting works turn on themes of nostalgia, longing, the search for home, and her psychological navigation of what it means to be American. This body of work is the subject of her first solo museum exhibition, Rooms by the Sea, opening October 10, 2026, at the Edward Hopper House Museum in Nyack, NY, in dialogue with works by Edward and Josephine Hopper.
This fall, Susan is teaching a plein air painting workshop for adults alongside artists Heidi Howard and Susanna Coffey during Nyack Plein Air Week (October 10–19), held in conjunction with her exhibition at the museum.
Susan received her MFA from Columbia University in 2020 and a BA with honors from Brown University in 2015. She is a 2025 Creative Capital Grantee, 2022 Artsy Vanguard Artist, Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, and a former artist-in-residence at Silver Art Projects. Chen's solo exhibitions have been presented with Meredith Rosen Gallery, New York, NY; Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; and Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York, NY. Recent group exhibitions include the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; Anchorage Museum, Anchorage, AK; Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME; Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Waltham, MA; Songwon Art Center, Seoul, South Korea; and Jeffrey Deitch, New York, NY & Los Angeles, CA. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Museum of Chinese in America, New York, NY; and Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China, among others.
This fall, Susan is teaching a plein air painting workshop for adults alongside artists Heidi Howard and Susanna Coffey during Nyack Plein Air Week (October 10–19), held in conjunction with her exhibition at the museum.
Susan received her MFA from Columbia University in 2020 and a BA with honors from Brown University in 2015. She is a 2025 Creative Capital Grantee, 2022 Artsy Vanguard Artist, Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, and a former artist-in-residence at Silver Art Projects. Chen's solo exhibitions have been presented with Meredith Rosen Gallery, New York, NY; Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; and Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York, NY. Recent group exhibitions include the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; Anchorage Museum, Anchorage, AK; Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME; Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Waltham, MA; Songwon Art Center, Seoul, South Korea; and Jeffrey Deitch, New York, NY & Los Angeles, CA. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Museum of Chinese in America, New York, NY; and Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China, among others.
Heidi Howard: “Florencia Escudero and Michael Sims” 72 x 54 inches, acrylic on canvas, 2022
Heidi Howard is a New York–based painter. An internationally exhibiting artist, Howard’s work spans still lifes, portraits, and en plein air landscapes.
Howard’s portraiture emerges from a unique choreography of the studio encounter. To prepare for a session, Howard will first spend time one-on-one with their sitter, sometimes over months or years. During this period, the artist develops an impression of that individual’s personality and shared aesthetic predilections. At the studio, Howard creates a welcoming environment, painting swiftly and responsively, and always serving a home-cooked dinner at the session’s conclusion. This interaction—defined by conviviality, reciprocity, and nourishment—pointedly reimagines the historically loaded, sometimes-exploitative dynamic between painter and model.
A lifelong resident of Queens, Howard grew up steeped in New York’s creative firmament. The daughter of avant-garde composer Earl Howard and installation artist Liz Phillips (a frequent collaborator), Howard learned to see art, art-making, and art institutions as integral to community and family life. For Howard, painting is inextricably tied to rhythms of the everyday, part of a continuum of gestures, habits, and domestic experiences. Improvisation is at the core of their work. Loose brushwork, dancelike gesture, and a fully embodied expression reveal a debt to female painters such as Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler, while a Day-Glo palette, Les Nabis patterning, and embrace of irresolution and accident show a highly personal interpretation of the broader history of modernist painting. Taken together, Howard’s subjects—many of them artists—register a cross-section of New York’s artistic world. In this regard, Howard’s artworks are a road map to a particular orientation, perspective, and place.
Since the completion of a large-scale mural project at the Queens Museum in 2018–20 (made with Phillips), Howard has turned increasingly toward paintings of plants and flowers. In these works, luscious, bold colors, and broad, sweeping line coalesce into ravishing statements about form and color. As in their portraiture, Howard works quickly and loosely, responding in real time to subtle movements of a leaf or petal as the painting unfolds. This ethic of engagement points to a sense that for art to matter it must be indistinguishable from life itself: porous, reciprocal, and constantly in motion.
Heid Howard has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including at the Leroy Neiman Center for Print Studies at Columbia University (2024, New York), One River School (2020, Englewood, NJ), Gaa Gallery (2019, Provincetown, MA), Nancy Margolis Gallery (2017, 2015, New York) and Con Artist Gallery (2011, New York). In addition, Howard has featured in group exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum (2025, Amsterdam), Dunkunsthalle (2024, New York), Wave Hill Public Garden and Cultural Center (2023, New York), Simone Subal Gallery (2021, New York), Queens Museum (2018–20, New York).
Howard’s portraiture emerges from a unique choreography of the studio encounter. To prepare for a session, Howard will first spend time one-on-one with their sitter, sometimes over months or years. During this period, the artist develops an impression of that individual’s personality and shared aesthetic predilections. At the studio, Howard creates a welcoming environment, painting swiftly and responsively, and always serving a home-cooked dinner at the session’s conclusion. This interaction—defined by conviviality, reciprocity, and nourishment—pointedly reimagines the historically loaded, sometimes-exploitative dynamic between painter and model.
A lifelong resident of Queens, Howard grew up steeped in New York’s creative firmament. The daughter of avant-garde composer Earl Howard and installation artist Liz Phillips (a frequent collaborator), Howard learned to see art, art-making, and art institutions as integral to community and family life. For Howard, painting is inextricably tied to rhythms of the everyday, part of a continuum of gestures, habits, and domestic experiences. Improvisation is at the core of their work. Loose brushwork, dancelike gesture, and a fully embodied expression reveal a debt to female painters such as Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler, while a Day-Glo palette, Les Nabis patterning, and embrace of irresolution and accident show a highly personal interpretation of the broader history of modernist painting. Taken together, Howard’s subjects—many of them artists—register a cross-section of New York’s artistic world. In this regard, Howard’s artworks are a road map to a particular orientation, perspective, and place.
Since the completion of a large-scale mural project at the Queens Museum in 2018–20 (made with Phillips), Howard has turned increasingly toward paintings of plants and flowers. In these works, luscious, bold colors, and broad, sweeping line coalesce into ravishing statements about form and color. As in their portraiture, Howard works quickly and loosely, responding in real time to subtle movements of a leaf or petal as the painting unfolds. This ethic of engagement points to a sense that for art to matter it must be indistinguishable from life itself: porous, reciprocal, and constantly in motion.
Heid Howard has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including at the Leroy Neiman Center for Print Studies at Columbia University (2024, New York), One River School (2020, Englewood, NJ), Gaa Gallery (2019, Provincetown, MA), Nancy Margolis Gallery (2017, 2015, New York) and Con Artist Gallery (2011, New York). In addition, Howard has featured in group exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum (2025, Amsterdam), Dunkunsthalle (2024, New York), Wave Hill Public Garden and Cultural Center (2023, New York), Simone Subal Gallery (2021, New York), Queens Museum (2018–20, New York).
Susanna Coffey: Heidi painting Alice and Dorothy in Thierry’s garden, 27 Rue Claude Monet, June 9th, 2022
A respected figurative painter, Susanna Coffey’s work in self-portraiture, landscape, still life and illustration of classical literature is based on an intense observation of her motif or text. She is an artist known for her ability to create beautifully wrought and expressive imagery from subject matter often deemed ordinary or mundane.
Her works in self-portraiture are investigations of the iconic human head. This work is driven by questions about what a portrait image can mean. What is a beautiful appearance? Why do conventionally gendered images involve caricature? Can inchoate feeling-states be adequately portrayed?
Coffey is also known for her landscape paintings. Like the self-portraits, these works are made from the direct observation of her motif. But unlike them these works are always painted at night. The subject of each “night painting” is chosen for the way it transforms during the hours of darkness. A gas station, parking lot, or cow pasture may seem ordinary when seen in days light but after dark, in her night painting these places take on entirely different appearances. Coffey’s book Night Painting was recently published in its second edition by MAB Books. This book features her nocturnal landscape paintings as well as essays, poems and prose poems by Dr. Carol Becker, Brice Brown, Jane Coffey, Jane Kenyon and Mark Strand.
Recently she created, at The Leroy Neiman Center for Print Studies, a series of jigsaw woodcuts illustrating Apostolos Athenassakis’ English translation of The Homeric Hymn to Demeter. In 1988 Kallichoron Press published her illustrated book of this same translation.
Coffey’s work is included in the collections of The Art institute of Chicago, The National Portrait Gallery, National Academy of Design, The Hood Museum, The Honolulu Museum of Art, Minneapolis Museum of Art, The Weatherspoon Art Museum, the Yale University Art Gallery, and others. This year she was one of the recipients of the “Artist x Artist Award” given by the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Other awards include the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, the National Endowment for the Arts Award, and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award. Her many one-person exhibitions have been written about in The New York Times, Art in America, Art News, the New Yorker, Hyperallergic, and other publications. Several books and monographs have included, or featured, her work. She received honorary degrees from the Pennsylvania College of the Arts and the Lyme Academy of Art.
Susanna Coffey received her BFA magna cum laude from the University of Connecticut at Storrs and graduated with an MFA from the Yale School of Art. She was a Visiting Professor of Painting in Columbia University’s School of Visual Art from 2013 until 2023. In 2018 she retired as the F.H. Sellers Professor in Painting at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Her works in self-portraiture are investigations of the iconic human head. This work is driven by questions about what a portrait image can mean. What is a beautiful appearance? Why do conventionally gendered images involve caricature? Can inchoate feeling-states be adequately portrayed?
Coffey is also known for her landscape paintings. Like the self-portraits, these works are made from the direct observation of her motif. But unlike them these works are always painted at night. The subject of each “night painting” is chosen for the way it transforms during the hours of darkness. A gas station, parking lot, or cow pasture may seem ordinary when seen in days light but after dark, in her night painting these places take on entirely different appearances. Coffey’s book Night Painting was recently published in its second edition by MAB Books. This book features her nocturnal landscape paintings as well as essays, poems and prose poems by Dr. Carol Becker, Brice Brown, Jane Coffey, Jane Kenyon and Mark Strand.
Recently she created, at The Leroy Neiman Center for Print Studies, a series of jigsaw woodcuts illustrating Apostolos Athenassakis’ English translation of The Homeric Hymn to Demeter. In 1988 Kallichoron Press published her illustrated book of this same translation.
Coffey’s work is included in the collections of The Art institute of Chicago, The National Portrait Gallery, National Academy of Design, The Hood Museum, The Honolulu Museum of Art, Minneapolis Museum of Art, The Weatherspoon Art Museum, the Yale University Art Gallery, and others. This year she was one of the recipients of the “Artist x Artist Award” given by the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Other awards include the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, the National Endowment for the Arts Award, and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award. Her many one-person exhibitions have been written about in The New York Times, Art in America, Art News, the New Yorker, Hyperallergic, and other publications. Several books and monographs have included, or featured, her work. She received honorary degrees from the Pennsylvania College of the Arts and the Lyme Academy of Art.
Susanna Coffey received her BFA magna cum laude from the University of Connecticut at Storrs and graduated with an MFA from the Yale School of Art. She was a Visiting Professor of Painting in Columbia University’s School of Visual Art from 2013 until 2023. In 2018 she retired as the F.H. Sellers Professor in Painting at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
October 14-16, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday; 3:30-5:00p
“Would be Artist" Family Walking Tours
Edward Hopper House Museum
Come by the Museum AFTER SCHOOL!
“Would be Artist" Family Walking Tours
Edward Hopper House Museum
Come by the Museum AFTER SCHOOL!
Beginning at the Museum, families with younger children may go on an self guided mini tour of Nyack using a borrowed or purchased “Would Be Artist" Kit. Titled after an inscription Edward carved on his own pencil box, the kit includes drawing tools, sketchbook and walking tour all tucked inside a canvas backpack. On the 30-45 minute tour, families can walk in Hopper's footsteps sketching places in Nyack that he frequented, observed, and drew.
This project is made possible with funds from the New York Council on the Arts
