MONROE, Conn. — Carol W. Hubbard, a well-known artist in the competitive watercolor circuit in New England and throughout the country, moved to a farmhouse on Cutlers Farm Road with her husband, Arthur, in 1959. There, the couple raised their two children, Laura and John, while Hubbard painted in her home studio and taught art classes.
Laura Sinclair, Hubbard’s daughter, remembers when Cutlers Farm was a dirt road. “The railroad was still running at Pepper Street Crossing when I was a kid,” she said.
The previous homeowners decided to sell their house amid plans to extend Route 25 through their property, which would be taken by eminent domain. “My father thought it would never happen and bought it cheap,” Sinclair said of the $14,500 purchase.
Sinclair’s mother was a regular patron of Edith Wheeler Memorial Library, so when the artist passed away at age 92, the family decided to donate one of her paintings to the library.
Laura and her husband, Mark Sinclair, who live in New Hampshire and are both graduates of Masuk High School’s Class of 1979, attended a ceremony Thursday unveiling the painting, “Contretemps,” which was created in 2018 and first shown at the Rocky Mountain National Watercolor Society.
Laura said her mother was an active painter, until she fell in her home in October of 2024 and broke her wrist. She passed in December of that year.
“When I was dealing with my mom’s estate I had to discharge everything in the house, including her art studio, which had 200 paintings — a lot painted on two sides,” she said.
Laura invited Nicole Cignoli, director of Edith Wheeler Memorial Library, to look at around 14 paintings to choose one for the donation.
“I selected this one,” Cignoli said, while looking at the colorful abstract painting displayed on a wall on the Adult Services Floor Thursday morning.
The painting has a brilliant red color, white rings and stripes, and what resembles pieces of yellowing historic documents. Laura said her mother saw it as a fish, because of the shape.
“I like the movement of the painting,” Cignoli said, adding the piece is unlike anything else in the library.
A reception was held with family, friends and former students of Hubbard to celebrate the unveiling of her painting, as well as her life. After the ceremony, those in attendance mingled over hors d’oeuvres in the library’s cafe. First Selectman Terry Rooney also attended the ceremony.
“What a wonderful addition to the library,” Rooney said. “When I was young, I did a little drawing myself and I look at the use of color and the way things pop. I think everybody looks at something like that and sees something different. You look around the building and you see the generic pictures and this is something very unique. It looks wonderful on that wall. Thank you for sharing that.”
“I didn’t know Carol, but I feel like just hearing the last 10 minutes, I missed out,” he continued. “She sounds like a wonderful human being. Obviously she lives on through her art. It’s beautiful.”
“She used to say, ‘putting the paint on the paper is the last step. The first step is the concept, the design, getting it on paper,'” Laura said of her mother.
While growing up in town, Laura remembers going to Monroe’s public library when it was a standalone brick building on a hill on Fan Hill Road. Now she said everything has come full circle with her mother’s painting adorning the wall of the modern Edith Wheeler Memorial Library building.
The watercolor is actually the second painting of Hubbard’s to hang at the library. The Marie Lederer Children’s Department downstairs has a portrait of its namesake painted by another artist. Beside it, is a portrait of Lederer’s daughter, Kate, by Hubbard, who was commissioned to paint it.
Laura said she was friends with Kate, who took ballet, tap and gymnastics with her in a little studio in someone’s home on Fan Hill Road.
An accomplished artist
Laura said her mother had index cards with the names of the paintings she was sending to competitions. “She had to name all these abstracts,” Laura recalled, adding the names were usually from music and in French.
Hubbard won numerous awards at juried shows in Kent, Fairfield, Guilford and Westport, most recently in 2023 at age 91 with the American Watercolor Society (AWS), where she was a Signature Member since 1981.
She had earned a BFA in interior design from Syracuse University in 1955, and went on to become a technical illustrator, drafting helicopter engine parts and cross-sections for Sikorsky Aircraft.
Hubbard went on to work with different painting mediums. Oils were her mainstay, until she became interested in the more experimental capabilities of watercolor. She worked exclusively on 300 pound cold press Arches paper with Windsor/Newton paint.
Self-taught in many regards, she quickly gained attention with the AWS Traveling Show Award. Hubbard was broadly accepted to art memberships and her work has been sold in New England galleries.
Her contest entries appeared at shows in over 20 states a year, with purchases made by many corporations, including in Japan.
Hubbard’s work has been featured in several magazines, as well as books by Rockport Publishers and International Artist’s Magazine.
The 2023 Elsie and David Wu Ject Key Award, selected for the Traveling Show, was for Hubbard’s painting, “Moo Goo Gai Pan.”
‘A teacher at heart’
Aside from her distinguished track record as an award-winning artist, Hubbard taught private classes for over 50 years and many of her students went on to competitive art and teaching as well.
“There was just a never ending stream of people coming to the house,” Laura recalled. She thanked the former students at the ceremony for bringing her mother joy, because she said Hubbard was a teacher at heart.
“I can’t imagine having such a passion that it kept you up and going every day,” Laura said. “She was just so excited to share what she could see her students do, and her students would also be very happy with their outcomes. My mother used to say things like, ‘well if you can paint your fingernail, you can do watercolor.'”
When commenting on her students’ work, Hubbard could be heard saying things like, “That’s the bee’s knees,” and “that’s too bold in the painting. That’s like the lady in the red dress. Tone it down.”
“You have your own artwork to say, ‘I did that with Carol,'” Laura said to the students in attendance. “I’m thrilled that she picked one of the abstracts,” she added of Cignoli’s choice for the library, “because she was really knocking these out.”
Laura said her mother used scarves and other items to have something reflective in her paintings, “because that was her jive. ‘Let’s see if we can make something as difficult as reflection really look real.'”
“I know she made it look easy at times, but she had her ups and downs too — and those I threw out,” Laura said as those gathered erupted into laughter.
Among the former students were Judy Sims, Marcia Izzo, Linda Pickwick, Grace Scharr McEnaney, Katie Soares and Nelda Dandridge. Mark Sinclair’s sister, Maureen, whose daughter lives in Monroe, also attended the event with her grandson, Jack, who is six-months-old.
“I always felt your mother was one of the most extraordinary women ever,” Sims told Laura. “She was a born teacher and with her students she gave everything. She shared all of her gifts, her talents. She taught you how to paint and she shared that. Most people would have kept it to themselves, because she competed. She’s gone on and competed against some of her students as it turned out.”
Sims said Hubbard had the legacy of taking someone in and nurturing them in every way. She said Hubbard had a way of telling if something was bothering one of her students and, without always discussing it, would give them a comforting hug.
“We all had tea together,” Sims said. “She was infinitely gracious, because she opened her home to all her students and she taught them all with grace.”
Laura chuckled while recalling how her mother served wine during some night classes.
Izzo remembers meeting Hubbard in a painter group in Danbury and liking her work, and commented on how Hubbard was “a fierce racquetball player.”
“She would tell me she was better than the men,” Soares added with a smile.
“Our friendship evolved,” Izzo said. “She did paintings for a building my family had built. That’s how we decorated the walls, we rented her paintings.”
Pickwick was known among the friends as one of Hubbard’s most prolific students, and McEnaney was already a commercial artist when she first met Hubbard.
“She was just so important to me on so many levels,” McEnaney said, calling Hubbard a fantastic teacher, a wonderful friend and a mentor.
“I can feel her here and she is laughing hysterically that you picked this painting,” McEnaney said of ‘Contretemps’ with a laugh, “because she’s like, ‘out of all my paintings? Really? They would pick this one?'”
“I love this too,” McEnaney said of the painting. “When I think of her work, I love the still life. She was a master of still life when she was younger. A lot of people just do barns, or they just do still life or they just do abstract. She did everything, and I loved her industrial work, you know her machines and different things. I really miss her. She was a great person, a really wonderful person.”
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