The Painted Scene blog

From the Kitchen Table with Grandma to The Painted Scene

September 22, 2026 · By Maureen Peterson

Hi, I'm Maureen. If we've met at a paint party, you already know quite a bit about my recent history but not much about my past — so here's the longer version of my story, and what it's actually like when I show up at your door with a car full of art supplies.

It started with my grandma

My grandma was an artist. When I was six, she moved in with us — but even before that, whenever I stayed with her or visited her, we did art. We drew, we painted, we did crafts, we created mixed-media sculptures. We even decorated the inside of department store windows together, back when that was a thing.

Here's the part that gets me: all these years later I find myself decorating business windows again, but now I paint ON them. Full circle, right? I think she'd get a kick out of that.

My grandma died when I was almost 24. Then life happened — I was raising my kids from 1989 to 2011, and during those years I didn't do a lot of art. There just wasn't room for it. But a little over 15 years ago, I picked up a paintbrush again, and I never really put it down.

The funny part

Here's what's funny: I never liked people watching me paint. Ask anyone — I was the person who wanted to work alone, no audience. So the fact that I now stand in front of a room full of people and paint on purpose is pretty ironic.

It's even more ironic with the window painting, honestly. At a paint party, it's just the group. When I'm painting a window, there are strangers driving by, walking past, watching the whole time. If you'd told the younger me that one day I'd paint with an audience of commuters, I'd have laughed.

How the parties started

I belong to The Phoenix, a sober community center here in town. There was a man running a monthly paint class there, and when he couldn't do it anymore, I offered to take over. That's when I found out I really enjoyed it — like, really enjoyed it.

I have a philosophy about that: when you find something you really look forward to, you should do it as often as you can. I looked forward to that once-a-month class so much that I started thinking — why not take this out into the community? That way I get to do it more than once a month, and I get to meet more people in my town.

That's how The Painted Scene was born.

So what actually happens at a paint party?

People ask me this a lot, so here's the whole thing, start to finish.

First, I unload everything out of the car — and I mean everything. Easels, canvases, paints, brushes, water cups, paper towels. Then I get all the place settings set up. At each spot, I put the paintbrushes we'll need for that particular painting (rubber-banded together), plus a big stack of paper towels, because those are extremely necessary. Then I fill all the water cups and get those passed around, put up the easels, and set the canvases on them.

One thing I do before I ever leave the house: I trace a stencil that I made of the main part of the painting onto every canvas. That way, when we're together, we concentrate on painting instead of worrying about drawing and getting all the dimensions correct. The last thing I hand out is the paint itself, so it doesn't dry out.

I bring sticky name tags so I can keep track of who everyone is — it keeps things personal. I encourage everyone to take a picture of my example painting (the finished version of what we're about to do) with their phone. That way, if you want to paint ahead or if you fall behind, you've got it right there and you can zoom in close. It's hard to see detail from every seat in most rooms, even though I walk my painting around as I go so everyone can see what I'm doing up close.

Oh — and yes, I start a brand-new painting right along with everyone else. I'm not standing there with a finished one. We're doing it together.

Before we start painting, I have everyone go around and introduce themselves. Sometimes I'll do an icebreaker that fits the event — a birthday, a bachelorette party, a team night out, whatever we're celebrating. Then we paint, we talk, people ask questions. It's relaxed. There's no test at the end.

My one rule (okay, it's not really a rule)

Right off the bat, I tell everyone: you can paint it however you want. I'm just here to guide you if you want to do it the way I did it. But your painting doesn't have to look like mine. Honestly, my favorite part of the whole thing is seeing how people put their own interpretation, their own spin, on each painting. That's the best part.

The hardest part? How fast the time goes. We'll be laughing and painting and somebody will say "we're done already?" and I'll say — yep, time flies when you're having fun. Every single time.