Nini & JJ

Abstract artist Nini Swift Seaman and her daughter, watercolor painter Jessica June “JJ” Avrutin, share an airy downtown studio space with room for the creative muses of both artists to convene.

But the tightly woven pair share more than just a studio. They both went to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University — Nini by way of the art school and JJ through the combined program at Tufts. They both know the softer side of the palette, dipping their brushes in colors that complement each other seamlessly and make glints of pigment dance.

And they are both lifelong artists, seeking to capture as much of the world’s whimsy and wonder as they can, fully aware that some aspects of beauty must be rendered, not replicated.

“I told JJ never to paint sunsets how they really are because it will come out cheesy,” Nini recalls, “You can’t duplicate something that magnificent.”

For JJ, her mother’s childhood advice —in her words, “that sunsets are hard to paint, because they’re almost prettier in person” — led her to look at things differently. Soon, she was finding her own aesthetic in moody skies and muted tones, ultimately defining a fanciful free form style in watercolors that became her signature at Martha Stewart Living in New York, where she was a textile designer for many years before transitioning fully to fine art and freelance design and moving back to Carpinteria in 2020.

“JJ started intuitively painting at a very young age, and drawing,” says Nini, who received her MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago. “I didn’t in any way try and make that happen. It was just instinctive. I don’t meddle.”

Nini always liked to paint too. She recalls that she had terrible eyesight and didn’t get glasses until elementary school. She’s comfortable with the sight of abstractions, motion and light, perhaps influencing her later predilection for abstract painting. Her subject matter has largely been abstract landscapes, created through layers of paint, and informed by her time spent living in Wyoming and California. Under the endless Western sky, the changing horizon drives her work.

“I love color coming through color; it gives everything more dimension and more elements of surprise,” Nini says. “In a painting you want your eye to move around, finding the corners, finding the center. I’m never quite sure when my paintings are done because I do layer over layer. Some are never finished.”

There’s a conversation happening between Nini and JJ’s work, between similar sensibilities but distinct topics and techniques. JJ’s work is usually figurative, loosely crafted vignettes of animals, botanicals, cityscapes, and other elements of delight.

Nini’s work informs hers, JJ says, noting the depth that Nini achieves through layers. She’s also inspired by her natural landscape, describing “an innate feeling” of wanting to capture “the beauty of the world onto paper but with my own view.”

Yet as close as the two are, they never paint at the same time together. “We both love our solitude,” Nini says. “We just like to go to the studio and peace out. Otherwise, we’d just start talking and it would be a hopeless situation.”

JJ’s daughters may soon follow in mom and grandma’s footsteps, or brushstrokes. Four-year old Ella is already saying, “I’m an artist like my mom.”

BY JJ AVRUTIN