Strokes of Genius

August 18, 2017 Elizabeth Heubeck

Deborah Hoffman says she created her Paint & Sip Studio as a means of escaping corporate America and pursuing a creative life. (Photo by Steve Ruark)

Deborah Hoffman’s Paint & Sip Studio offers a perfect setting for relaxation and creativity.

Enter the Paint & Sip Studio of Owings Mills in the bustling Valley Village Shopping Center and it’s easy to leave behind whatever was weighing on your mind before you arrived.

In the large, windowless room sealed off from the outside world, samples of bright, whimsical artwork line the walls. On the floor, customers have written their names in bold, colorful brushstrokes.

“I used to have people sign the floor. We’ve run out of room,” says Deborah Hoffman, the studio’s owner. She opened the studio in June 2016 and business has been growing steadily ever since.

After spending much of her career in marketing and advertising, and then working in real estate for about a decade, Hoffman decided it was time for a change.

“I wanted to open up something for myself,” she says. “I was tired of corporate America.”

Her ‘aha! moment’ came when Hoffman was having lunch with a friend who suggested she organize a paint night for a group at her synagogue. Out of that conversation, the seed for Hoffman’s new business was born.

Shortly afterward, Hoffman found the location for her studio at 9141 Reisterstown Road. Then, just before setting up to open for business, she was driving down a stretch of Reisterstown Road in Pikesville when she saw that a similar studio had just opened there.

“I almost had a heart attack,” Hoffman recalls. But in retrospect, she says she realizes there’s room for many such studios in the area.

Indeed, the paint-and-sip studio concept has grown exponentially in the last decade.

It’s a fairly simple business model: the concept invites consumers of any artistic background to paint a picture, led by an instructor in step-by-step fashion, while enjoying the company of friends or colleagues, and indulging in snacks and beverages (usually BYOB).

Multiple sources credit Louisiana residents Cathy Deano and Renee Maloney for founding the first paint-and-sip style studio in the nation. In 2007, post-Hurricane Katrina, the women needed a fun diversion and a way to compensate for their personal business losses, so they launched Painting with a Twist.

Now, it’s estimated that about 1,000 similar businesses have cropped up around the country, many of them franchises. (Hoffman’s independently owned studio is not part of a franchise.)

In her studio, Hoffman seems to be enjoying her departure from the corporate world and relishing the focus on providing a fun, safe space for customers to enjoy themselves and test their artistic abilities.

Mixing a cup of white paint with a paintbrush in anticipation of an incoming group on a recent Wednesday night, Hoffman says that she strives to create a party-like atmosphere in her studio, with music and an invitation for customers to bring snacks and beverages.

To date, she says, the drinking has not gotten out of hand or in the way of the creative process. Aiding each outing are one of four artists that Hoffman has hired to lead the customers in a pre-selected painting. Some groups choose instead to paint oversized wine glasses.

While most groups — from family gatherings to bachelorette parties to corporate retreats — come to her studio, Hoffman also has taken her services to clients at locations such as offices, synagogues, churches and other group venues.

For Dr. Joanne Block Rief, a local dentist, painting wine glasses with decorative flowers at Paint & Sip Studio OM proved to be a fitting activity for her staff’s team-building day.

“It was very relaxing,” Rief says. “And it brought out our creativity. We all let our hair down.”

Which is exactly what Hoffman intended.

For information, visit paintandsipom.com or call 443-522-8843.

Elizabeth Heubeck is a Baltimore-based freelance writer.

Top photo: Deborah Hoffman says she created her Paint & Sip Studio as a means of escaping corporate America and pursuing a creative life. (Photo by Steve Ruark)