Prey's work was shown late last year at the Seamen's Church Institute in New York in a series of paintings "Works on Water," developed over the many years of her connection with and living in fishing communities in Maine and Long Island.

"We romanticize the fishermen, but in reality it is a tough life with problems such as alcoholism and drug abuse. Fishermen are my neighbors and friends, one of the boats I often painted sank just off shore last summer with the captain trapped underneath. It's a gritty life behind the paintings," said Prey, who lives in Oyster Bay, New York, with her husband Jeffrey, a Presbyterian pastor, and son, Austin, and daughter, Emily.

The SCI exhibit showed 20 large monumental watercolors and 10 smaller new works from the artist. "The pristine landscapes and seascapes of this series suggest the power and permanence of nature in contrast to the relative transience of human life," said art curator Sarah Cash of Corcoran Gallery. "Prey is a virtuoso who knows the rules and breaks them to enter new creative ground."

She is an international ambassador with paintings on exhibit in U.S. embassies abroad through the U.S. Arts in Embassies Program. Her painting "God and Country" from her 9/11 series is on view at the U.S. Embassy in Paris, hanging in the company of works by major American artists including Sargant, Homer and Hopper. She is the only living American painter included in the exhibit.

Considered one of the foremost landscape painters active in the U.S., she has eight paintings on exhibit at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid, including a number of works from her 9/11 series. She was invited last March to speak about her work to the cultural leaders of both France and Spain.

Her 30-year development as an artist is shaped by a strong grounding in the history of art, she says. She describes her work as characterized by intense and exacting study of subject, color, and light, as well as a rich accumulation of life experiences. Prey's large scale painting, "Gallantly Streaming," part of a body of work done in response to 9/11, was requested by First Lady of New York Libby Pataki to hang in her New York office.

Cash writes that in Prey's paintings, "Our imaginations are enticed not only by the houses, boats, and sheds themselves, but also by the exquisitely wrought details that animate the compositions. These details are nowhere more densely worked or meticulously rendered than in the group of winter workshop interiors, the most innovative compositions in this series and an entirely new subject for Prey. Inspired in part by her work on the 2003 White House Christmas card, these intricately composed works also testify to her predilection for strong color and her interest in probing beneath exterior appearances.

"I've always been fascinated with what is inside, from the outside looking in," the artist admits. Two of her most ambitious watercolors, "Blue Note" and "Bait House," provide glimpses into these bright and congenial havens for the off-season work of trap repairs, buoy painting, and line cleaning, as well as socializing.

Prey was recently honored by the New York State Senate with the Senate's prestigious "Women of Distinction Award," created in 1998 as a tribute to outstanding New York women. She joins previous honorees Susan B. Anthony and Eleanor Roosevelt.