If you want to make art, you also have to make a commitment. Until about a year ago, I did more dreaming about painting than actually doing it. I’m now painting every chance I get and also pushing myself to take risks that will, hopefully, make me a stronger painter. Read about my latest endeavor.
Part of becoming an artist is daring to take risks. It’s not so difficult when you’re alone at your easel, but deciding to display your work in public is another matter. I’m glad I took the risk.
Joan Dyer loves to paint. Until recently she didn’t even know she could. She’s always been creative, but never painted. Now, there’s no stopping her!
My month-long daily painting project is nearing its end. The most important lesson I’ve learned is that if you’re serious about your art, you need to make the time and effort.
After many years of putting everything else first, I recently decided to paint every day. Here’s how it’s going, so far.
I think Lin Lisberger’s sculptures are mesmerizing. They draw me in and invite me to stay a while. One, in particular, wouldn’t loosen its grip. (more…)
On the way to class the other day, I passed a much younger fellow student on the opposite side of the street. He called out, “Hey Diane, how’s it going? On your way to painting class?” He mentioned seeing my fractured self-portrait on Facebook and how much he liked it and I said I also liked the work he’d been doing lately. (more…)
A history lesson comes with this profile of artist Ellen Babcock. Ellen lives in New Mexico, where she is an assistant professor of sculpture at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. She also founded the organization Friends of the Orphan Signs. Ellen got her BFA from the Portland School of Art (MECA) in 1984 and makes regular visits to Maine to visit her family.
When she’s not at her easel, Diane Dahlke is encouraging and mentoring aspiring and developing artists. She teaches painting in MECA’s Continuing Studies Program. That’s where I first met Diane. I took her Practice of Painting class several times. Couldn’t get enough!
Because her lessons still roll around in my head and in the hand that holds my paintbrush, it is only fitting that I include her in my series of Profiles of Maine Artists. (more…)
Mary Stanford got the birthday surprise of her life in 2012 when she opened the door to what she thought was a sale. She loves to go junking and so, that’s the ruse her friends Emily Barker and Lynn Hart had cooked up to get her there. They were at her friend Debe Loughlin’s house, but Mary just thought she was trying to get rid of some of her things. “I opened the door and there were all these people,” she says. “Fifty or more people yelling, ‘Surprise!’ I totally lost it. They were snapping pictures. There were artists that I hadn’t seen in a long time and groups of friends and two rooms full of art — just of me. It was really, really quite something.” (more…)