Meet Wendy
Wendy L Hildreth-Spence has been painting for decades, and the through-line has never changed: start with the color and let the picture follow.
Modern perspectives, timeless expressions
Color First Studio works out of Mount Sinai, on the North Shore of Long Island. The name is the working method: Wendy chooses the palette before anything else, then builds the picture out of it.
The result runs from carefully lettered commemorative canvases — like the 250th Anniversary of Freedom piece — through to loose, playful work made purely for the joy of it. That range is the point. Some paintings are meant to be looked at for a long time; some are meant to make you grin from the doorway.
Every piece is painted by hand, signed, and sold directly from the studio. There is no gallery markup and no middleman — you talk to the person who made it.
How a painting happens
1 · The palette
Colors are chosen first and mixed by hand. Nothing else is decided until the palette feels right.
2 · The drawing
Composition is sketched straight onto the canvas. Lettering, where there is any, is drawn out by hand rather than traced.
3 · The layers
Acrylic builds up in passes until the color sits where it should. Then it is signed, sealed and ready to hang.