By Barbara A. Preston for The Montgomery News | April 8, 2026
Art has been Patrice Sprovieri’s “first love” since she can remember, and she pursued it early, attending Cooper Union for art school. Later, around 1998, while raising her children in Belle Mead, she began attending the Art Students League in New York City.
“I decided I’ll go to Art Students League, and, you know, I’ll be a little fish in a big pond,” Sprovieri remarked, explaining that she felt the New Jersey art scene was “insular” and “old boyish.” She continued her studies there for another 10 to 12 years.
In addition to her artistic pursuits, Sprovieri spent a significant part of her career in local libraries. She worked part time at the Mary Jacobs Memorial Library in Rocky Hill. She later served as a full-time library assistant in Bridgewater for 12 years, retiring in 2020 from the Somerset County Library system.
While she has stepped back from her painting schedule to raise her grandson, Sprovieri continues to create, though she does not currently maintain a website or sell her art in galleries.
She recently sold her “Amy Garrett’s house” watercolor to a buyer who will donate it to the new Harold and Mary Jacobs Library Foundation, to hang in the Rocky Hill library when it reopens.
Sprovieri is a traditional painter, working with oils and watercolors, and also pastels.
After a 20-year career in the NJ courts as a certified shorthand reporter, she returned to painting, studying pastel with Christina DeBarry at the Somerset Art Association, and pastel painting with Americo DiFranza and Richard Pionk at the Art Studies League; watercolor painting with Gail Robertson, Gail Bracegirdle, and Ron Lent; and drawing with Jacques Fabert at the Princeton Art Association.
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Her work has appeared in shows at the Somerset Art Association, the 1860 House in Montgomery, and in Garden State Watercolor Society shows. She now resides with her family in Hillsborough.
Email Triceysp@gmail.com for more information about her art.
