What it’s actually like
Watercolor is the medium painters call the hardest to control, and Carolyn Zbavitel has built a gallery around it. Zbavitel Studio & Gallery is a single suite in the Marshall Square courtyard on Main Street, and it is a working studio first: she paints there daily, so the room usually has a painting in progress, a palette in use and the artist ready to talk about both.
The work on the walls is all hers. There are landscapes of every kind; cityscapes that start as plein-air sketches made on her travels; pet portraits, one of her specialties for years; and the newest body of work, the Bee Humble series, abstracted landscapes in vivid color with bees, cypress trees, olive trees and crosses recurring as reminders of humility, kindness and faith. Her stated approach is bold color and intuitive design, and she names the German Expressionist Gabriele Münter as a painter she adores.
Zbavitel came to painting after a career in sales and has spent about twenty-five years developing it, studying with watercolorists including Alvaro Castagnet, Herman Pekel, Carla O’Connor and Agnes Copeland. She has shown in juried exhibitions and invitationals since 2006 and won awards along the way.
What to buy
A cityscape. Loose, confident watercolor built from sketches made on the spot, the work that shows her training with Castagnet most clearly.
A piece from the Bee Humble series. The current direction, and the one the artist is most excited to explain.
A pet portrait. Commissioned from your photographs by a painter who has been doing them for decades.
Parking, timing and the practical stuff
Marshall Square is the single-story courtyard complex on the south side of Main Street just west of Marshall Way; Suite 7 is among the studios around the courtyard. Main Street parking is short-term and usually full, so use the free Civic Center garage off Drinkwater Boulevard, about eight minutes on foot. The Old Town on foot note maps the walk through the Old Town core.
The Scottsdale Arts District lists studio hours of Monday through Wednesday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursday 1 to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Sunday 1 to 4 p.m. Thursday evening is the ArtWalk, when the courtyard is at its liveliest. A weekday morning is when you are most likely to see her at the easel with time to talk.
Make a lap of the courtyard: Royse Contemporary for Valley contemporary artists, Quan’tum Art for artist-owned sculpture and glass, and King Galleries for Pueblo pottery are all a few doors away.
Eat while you’re there
Sel across Main Street is the reservation for an ArtWalk night. Malee’s Thai Bistro has been the gallery row’s lunch since 1987, Arcadia Farms Cafe on First Avenue does the garden-patio lunch, and Craft 64 at the west end of Main does pizza and Arizona beer.
How it got here
Main Street’s gallery row grew up through the 1960s and 1970s largely as a street of dealers, galleries representing rosters of artists who worked elsewhere. The courtyard at 7077 East Main is the corner of the district where the artists are in the building. Marshall Square is a single-story complex of small suites around a central courtyard, and through the 2010s it filled with working artists who sell from their studios — sculptors, painters, photographers and jewelers who, as one tenant put it in 2018, cover each other’s doors at lunchtime and don’t compete because they all do something different.
Zbavitel arrived in the early 2020s; the Scottsdale Arts District’s 2025 guide had the studio celebrating four years on Main Street, describing it as an independent, artist-owned space devoted to contemporary watercolor, acrylic and oil painting, and the 2026 guide lists it at Suite 7. She brings a long exhibition record with her: juried shows and invitationals since 2006, and past or present membership in the American Watercolor Society, the Fallbrook Art Association, the San Diego Watercolor Society and the Watercolor Society of North Carolina. Her work also turns up in the Valley’s charity auctions, including the Take Flight 2026 auction for youth and homelessness programs.
That combination — a painter with a national society résumé, a room of her own work and a door open on Thursday nights — is exactly what the courtyard has become known for. For the district around it, see the Main Street Arts District guide, and for the street that gives the corner its name, Marshall Way.