12-year-old Blaine artist to sell at street fair

Nichole Morell recently sold $450 worth of her original watercolors at Whidbey Island’s Greenbank Farm during The Islands Wine and Chocolate Tour. Not so remarkable, you might say, except that Nichole is 12-years-old and will be entering the seventh grade next fall at Blaine middle school.

“My friends will ask me to draw things for them,” said the accomplished young artist, “and that’s ok. It’s something I’ve always been able to do pretty easily.” The young painter was taught to paint by her grandmother who seems to have successfully passed her lifelong interest in art to her.

“I guess it skips a generation, like red hair,” laughed Nichole’s mother, Tricia Morell, “because it’s a talent I sure don’t have.” Nichole likes to work at the kitchen table but hopes that she’ll have a studio of her own one day. Her dad, Tom, is a contractor who specializes in restoring old buildings like the family’s century-old farmhouse on Arnie Road.
Nichole Morell’s work sells for between $20 and $30, and she also has cards that her mom, a computer and software specialist, prints up on a high-end Epson printer using archival ultra-high chromium inks.