Six watercolorists from the Artists League of the Sandhills will be exhibiting their paintings at the Exchange Street Gallery in Aberdeen in a show titled "Simply Watercolors."

The show will run through Friday, March 18. Exhibiting award-winning artists include Deane Billings, Mike D'Andrea, Caroline Love, Michelle Satterfield, K.C. Sorvari and Pamela Swarbrick.

Deane Carroll Billings, a native New Englander, was raised near the ocean in Marblehead, Mass. At age 72, her father began painting in watercolors and encouraged her to sign up for her first watercolor class. She has participated in many workshops and classes with a great variety of teachers, both at the Morris County Art Association in Morristown, N.J., and here at the Artists League of the Sandhills. Her art reflects her interest and love of gardens, flowers, buildings and the New England coast from Maine to Nantucket. She has also found a fascination with zoo animals and has been painting portraits of them in watercolors.

Mike D'Andrea is one of the instructors and a co-founder of the Artists League of the Sandhills. He has won many awards for watercolors in the Midwest and beyond. D'Andrea original watercolors can be found in commercial businesses, private collections and corporate offices. Landscapes, country scenes, harbors and wildlife are some of his favorite subjects. He describes watercolor as "a constant problem-solving activity."

Caroline Love, a native of North Carolina, loved to draw as a child, but did not begin studying art until moving to Miami as an adult. After discovering her niche was watercolors, she studied with Virginia Lovell, Phil Capen, Ferdinand Petrie and Bill Hinnant. After retiring from teaching in Florida, Caroline "came home" to North Carolina. Her watercolors reflect her love of the rural South. Her realistic paintings capture farm scenes and pastoral landscapes with weathered tobacco barns that are fast disappearing from the present day landscape. Her love of the sea inspires her lighthouse and seascape paintings from Maine to the Bahamas.

Michelle Mayeux Satterfield majored in fine arts at Palomar College in Southern California. She has taken many workshops from master artists in California, Arizona and Virginia. She got "hooked" on watercolors during a monthlong workshop in Morelia, Mexico, painting local models in costume and throughout the countryside. Many of her paintings have been done plein aire. She also took the inspiration of fields, flowers and farms with her to continue painting in her studio. Michelle likes to paint people, street scenes, courtyards, flowers and buildings from sketches and photos taken on her many travels, trying to capture the light, color and feeling from each place.

K.C. Sorvari was born in New York City and moved to progressively smaller cities until settling in Buies Creek for a career as director of the Law Library at Campbell University. She began college in Ohio as a fine arts major, changing colleges and majors as often as she changed locations. Eventually her need to paint re-emerged, and after she retired from Campbell, she moved to Aberdeen to become active with the Artists League.

"I am fascinated by planes and angles, whether the complex planes of cities or the simpler planes of landscapes," she says.

Pamela Swarbrick has studied art in England, Australia, California and at UNC-Chapel Hill. She has taken workshops with Charles Reid, Frank Webb, Alex Powers and Skip Lawrence. Since retiring to Pinehurst she has developed a love for painting watercolors. Her subjects are animals, florals, still life and collage-based abstracts.

"I want my paintings to show how mundane objects can reflect the wonderful colors all around us," Swarbrick says.

The Exchange Street Gallery is located at 129 Exchange St., Aberdeen. Regular gallery hours >are noon to 3 p.m., Monday through Saturday. >Classes and workshops available. >

For more information call the League office at (910) 944-3979, >from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, or visit >www.artistleague.org.