Our first Members Meeting of the year, in person on September 18, 2025 from 7 – 9 pm at the Amherst Community Church, 77 Washington Hwy, Snyder, NY. ( Lots of parking behind the facility.) Snacks provided by our Hospitality Committee.

After a brief Members Meeting welcoming everyone back, highlighting the upcoming events for 2025-26, and reviewing the work of a busy new Board of Directors, we will be treated to a demonstration by our Signature Member and Program Chair Mike Killelea.

Killelea’s plein air paintings, headlined as “exquisite watercolors” in American Artists’ Watercolor magazine, have appeared in print, museums and exhibitions. “I am a fanatic about painting in plein air. There are great scenes all around us, and even under our noses,” Killelea said. “By forcing an artist to choose a subject from an endless variety of options, their design and color skills are strengthened.”
Michael Killelea is an artist, author, teacher and traveler.
His work and biography have been included in the Smithsonian Institution’s Library for the American Art Museum/National Portrait Gallery, the Library of Congress, the Watson Research Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and those have become the basis for permanent files on him. He has been included in the Burchfield Penney Art Center data base as one of 215 best past and present artists in Western New York. He has traveled extensively and painted in plein air almost everywhere he’s been.
He is the former Secretary and a Signature member of the American Society of Marine Artists (ASMA). He’s also a Signature member and Program Committee chair of the Niagara Frontier Watercolor Society, a former Board member of the Niagara Arts & Cultural Center in Niagara Falls, and a signature member of the Buffalo Society of Artists. Until Covid ended it, he painted year round in plein air with the All Weather Gang. Killelea is a graduate of SUNY Farmingdale and has attended Pratt Institute and the School of Visual Arts. His work is in numerous private collections, has been reproduced on book and magazine covers, posters, prints & greeting cards and is featured in two books he wrote and illustrated about Long Island’s rural North Fork.
His website is www.killeleart.com, and he posts a new painting every week on the Killeleart Facebook page.