Princeton artist, Dana Collins is featured in the Prairie Arts Center Gallery this month, from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays and 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesdays through November 4. Forty-six recent oil paintings depict a year of the changing seasons on the water.

“I work from direct observations of the sites,” Collins said. “I mostly work from a small rowboat in the backwaters of the upper Mississippi River, though for some current works showing ice and snow, I set up my easel in front of the big windows facing the water at my Wisconsin home. I always find something new and interesting on the water. It is more than a matter of form — the composition, reflections, movement, all that. What draws me is something more still and, for want of better words, spiritual, profound.”

Dana Collins retired from college teaching in 2004 and currently conducts workshops in studio teaching throughout the Midwest and California, and has presented illustrated lectures on “Working on the Water.” Her work was recently exhibited at Outside the Lines Art Gallery in Dubuque, Iowa. She enjoys gardening, writing poetry, and plays the viola with the Illinois Valley Symphony Orchestra.