Priscilla Foley earned a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MA from the University of Rhode Island. She works primarily in watercolor and watercolor/collage.

Priscilla Foley was introduced to bird watching while a freshman at the Rhode Island School of Design. The habit has remained a constant throughout her adult life. However, it wasn’t until she began to paint birds that the real fun started. Getting a workable photographic image is a challenge requiring patience and a willingness to locate the bird in its natural habitat by threading one’s way through marsh grass, hopping over wave-swept rocks, and negotiating boot-devouring mud banks. The process of gathering material as a resource for future paintings is part hunt and part luck.

Ms. Foley has also entertained a long-term fascination with our rapidly, sometimes quirky, changing culture. Books such as “Bowling Alone” by Robert Putnam, which documents a decreasing level of civic participation across the country, prove the truth of felt, though often not articulated, cultural shifts.

 “As we travel, we are exhorted to do, buy, think, value and experience any number of competing ideas, products, services, insurances and life styles. We drive through communities of widely fluctuating economic health and witness a myriad of changing landscapes. Through advertising we sit in a front row seat for a thousand compelling short stories. We see man’s handiwork and places where man has let well enough alone.”

Like other painters before her, Ms. Foley considers these images revealing and significant.