June Art Show at RWC Includes Watercolors, Acrylics and Oil Paintings
Carol A. Muratore spent 32 years as a healthcare executive – ultimately as President of Extended Care at McKesson Corporation. She also was an adjunct professor at the University of Richmond and served on the Board of Directors for Bon Secours Richmond Health System. But she says the greatest achievement of her life was having four children who really like each other.
So, while it may seem like the opposite thing for a left-brained businesswoman to do, after her long professional career, she moved to a house on the water in Reedville, became an artist and created a “wonderful” shop called, “Plum Summer.”
Her watercolor, oil and acrylic paintings of old trucks, eagles, pelicans, flowers and watermen in the Northern Neck – will be on display in RWC’s Gallery Hall for the month of June. An artist’s reception will be held 1-4 p.m. on June 22. The reception and the month-long show is open to the local community.
Muratore didn’t know anything about retail and calls her second career as an artist and shop owner a “Happy Accident.” She loved owning the business, but she opened the store and moved into an old Victorian house dubbed Whaley Farm in 2006 thinking that her four children and five grandchildren would come to visit often.
They never came.
“My daughter, Katie, was diagnosed with breast cancer and my children didn’t want to leave her to come here,” she said. “Then, I found I couldn’t even get away to go home for the holidays. If I read a case study in business school that involved opening a store in Burgess, VA, I would advise against it. But the shop was so successful, it had gotten too big for me. I was working in the store on Black Friday and decided, it’s time for a change.”
Muratore sold the shop and traveled often to Boston to be with her children and grandchildren. Katie passed away in December 2024. Katie’s husband Josh is now the primary caregiver of their two little boys.
“It is a blessing that my children are so close,” she said. “They are there to support him.”
Coming back to the Northern Neck, Muratore resumed her art career and conducts watercolor workshops at Three Little Birds – formerly Plum Summer, the shop she sold.
Her recent artwork focuses on Northern Neck watermen – a dying breed that she found hard to get to know but with whom she was happy to make inroads.
“It’s important to me to do what I can to make sure this important skill doesn’t die off,” she said. “Only about 25% of the seafood we eat is wild caught. Much of it is imported from foreign sources.”
Muratore donated a painting to a ceremony to kick off the Virginia Marine Resources Commissioner’s Commercial Waterman’s Apprentice Program this year.
“It’s not easy to become a waterman,” she said. “To be an apprentice, you have to get a waterman’s card and you must have a mentor. You have to go out on the water at 5:00 in the morning before going to school.”
Muratore was recognized in February by the Virginia Waterman’s Association (VWA) with the Difference Maker Award for her series of articles and paintings exhibited at the Reedville Fisherman’s Museum and published in the Rappahannock Record.
“Other than being a mother, the greatest privilege of my life was getting to know the watermen,” she said. “Exploring the places they work, the tools they use, and their lifestyle was fascinating.
“People come up to me in Walmart and say, ‘Thank you for writing about my son or my father,’ she said. “Almost every painting of the watermen sold.”
Today, Muratore is enjoying teaching art as much as anything. “I’m a really good teacher,” she said.
“Some of my students are painting better than me. We do paintings of cats and dogs as well as portraits. I do special workshops like a recent recycled CDs suncatcher workshop. I’m big on recycling.”
Also, now her children do like coming here.
“When we were looking at houses back in 2006, my oldest daughter, Christina, who now works at Harvard Medical School, said, ‘If you buy that house, I’ll get married in the backyard.’ She didn’t even have a boyfriend!” Muratore said.
Fast forward to 2012, and she did just that. Guests rented houses on the Chesapeake Bay, and everyone had such a good time that they vowed to make an annual trip out to Reedville.
“I spent my career shuffling off and on private jets and spending time on Wall Street buying and selling companies, but I always loved art,” Muratore said. “When I was in college, I spent a semester abroad in Spain and the classes I needed to take for business – statistics, calculus and finance were all full, so my advisor said, ‘Just take anything.’ So, I took an oil painting class in Valencia.”
As much as she would have loved to have been an artist, Muratore had school loans to pay back, and she knew she needed to get a job and make money.
Reveling in her artist life today, Muratore challenges herself and her students constantly to try difficult subject matter – like painting fire and ice.
“I don’t have a theme when I sit down to paint, but I’m very prolific,” she said. “I have my coffee and work on a watercolor painting. It might take three or four days but if I don’t sit down in the morning, it won’t get done.”
The art exhibition is open to all 9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily throughout June in Rappahannock Westminster-Canterbury’s Gallery Hall.