Colleen Gianatiempo
PAL Instructor since 2020
She lives life the same way as she paints — by embracing the mystery, staying open to change, finding courage, honoring intuition and trusting the journey.
About
I try to live my life the same way I paint by embracing the mystery, staying open to change, finding courage, honoring my intuition and trusting the journey. This has led me to my colorful, layered, contemporary, distinctive style.
In my art career I have been honored to be a part of many art projects that has deemed me as “the artist with a heart”, always giving back and sharing my love for art, ie. Hearts of San Francisco, The Heart of Sonoma, The American Backyard, Sea Lions of San Francisco, Small Town with A Big Heart Mural, and more.
My journey as an artist began when I was 3 years old and would cut up our family photos! That habit progressed to making paper dolls and their clothes, painting, ceramics and so on!
Born an Air-force brat, with two dueling brained parents (engineer/artist,) paved the way for my foundation for everyday life of exercising both parts of my brain and constantly moving and having to adapt. I was incredibly shy and found great comfort in the creative process and the natural world.
Art has always been a part of my life paralleling my development as a person, through education, becoming an adult, raising children and working professionally. I have successfully merged them all somehow and have been addicted to education my entire life. I am honored to hold an MFA in painting from the Academy of Art in San Francisco. Now with a business degree, a graphic design degree and an MFA, I had all the knowledge and motivation I needed to pursue my fine art practice and teach and inspire students from around the globe.
Testimonials
“I just want to express my appreciation once again particularly for your ability to teach. As an extremely new beginner, I really learned a lot from you today. I have previously taken two full-length landscape watercolor classes, both listed as a beginner course. With that as background, I just wanted to point out some of the things that are making your teaching so effective. You are carefully explaining as you go along and at a low level that's suitable for beginners. At the same time you're moving fast enough you probably are not losing any of the experienced folks either (who doesn't mind hearing something again, it allows you to realize that it's the knowledge you already own).
You're breaking down the concepts as you use them, demonstrating on your painting or if necessary as an aside on another sheet, all the while, chatting about reasons, benefits, and pitfalls-- and taking the time to demonstrate those as well if needed.
Just a wonderful class. Masterfully taught! Thank you so very much!
Now the trick is to remember all that I learned. That's step one and step two is to attempt to apply it...”