Artist/designer Tom Menihan, originally of Rochester, NY, lives and works in Boston, MA. with his wife, Ginny ONeil.

After ten years of teaching elementary and high school, followed by a second career as a graphic designer, Tom made painting his main focus. Working primarily with transparent watercolor and gouache, he’s basically self-taught with many influences along the way including Bill Georgenes, Dudty Fletcher, Charles Reid, John Singer Sargeant, Winslow Homer and his late father, John C. Menihan (1908-1992), noted lithographer and painter.

Tom and Ginny show their work by appointment at Two Boats Gallery, their home/studios in Jamaica Plain and Oak Bluffs on the Vineyard. They work as a team, teaching watercolor painting workshops and private lessons in Treasure Beach, Jamaica where they are artists-in-residence at Jake’s Resort Hotel during the winter months.

"Combining an early interest in graphic design with a fascination for the light and spontaneity of watercolor, my work shows a calligraphic quality of line with an impressionistic point of view. I’m intrigued by coast lines and tree lines, roof lines and clothes lines.

I believe that art is a universal language which can transcend borders and other man-made barriers."

Ginny ONeil is a portrait and landscape artist who works mainly in watercolor. A lifetime Boston resident, she also spends time in Martha’s Vineyard, and Treasure Beach, Jamaica where she and her husband, Tom Menihan, are the artists-in-residence at Jake’s Resort Hotel during the winter months.

Ginny and Tom show their work by appointment at Two Boats Gallery, their home/studios in Jamaica Plain and Oak Bluffs. Ginny and Tom work as a team teaching watercolor painting through art immersion experiences, workshops and private lessons.

One of the ten ONeil sisters of Boston’s Easter Parade during the 1940’s and 50’s, Ginny credits her late mother, Julia ONeil, for early creative inspiration. While raising five children she attended Boston State College and MIT for City Planning.

When Ginny began painting with watercolors on her first trip to Jamaica, she was intrigued by the light and color of the Caribbean coast and the beauty of the Jamaican people, and she knew that she’d found her life’s work. Her first painting guru was Bill Georgenes, who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. A compelling interest in portraiture led her to study with the late Dudty Fletcher who taught at the DeCordova Museum and the Cambridge Center for the Arts.

"My watercolors are a blend of realistic and impressionistic images – portraits or landscapes with an indication of the human element. To capture the look and mood of a subject, I blend colors of shapes and shadows into strokes that dance around the light.

My artwork reflects the racial and ethnic diversity of my life and my community. I want happiness and optimism to permeate my paintings, to be shared with those who see the work and who take it into their homes."