Calling to art felt many years ago for Dianne Lemley
Dianne Lemley, 64, retired as an elementary educator/art educator a few years ago. Now she gazes across Newman Lake from her art studio as she creates watercolors, sketches, and blind-contour drawings and collages.
Her styles range from traditional to distorted realism, especially with the line or blind-contour pieces, which is when the artist looks only at the object and not at the drawing. The final pieces are floating figures of distinct realistic features mixed with unexpected bends and twists.
Her favorite subject is the human figure but she is also attached to things like water lilies, wildflowers and wildlife.
Her art career began in her mind in elementary school. She has vivid memories of an art room and a wonderful teacher.
“She filled my head with wonder and taught me to see the world in a colorful way,” Lemley said. “I thought it would be lovely to be an artist when I grew up.”
Marriage and children kept her home by choice. During those years, she experimented on a potter’s wheel. In 1981, she received a bachelor in fine arts degree from Whitworth College, and in 1989, she received her master’s degree in arts and teaching.
From 1982 to 2002, she taught at Broadway Elementary and Liberty Lake, where she also served as art coordinator. She helped develop art programs and promote the arts, and worked as a staff presenter for the Central Valley school district and at Whitworth, as a mentor teacher and adjunct faculty.
For 20 years, she taught others to see the world in a colorful way. A parent once told her, “You taught my child a whole new way of looking at the world through art.”
Though she is not yet actively marketing herself, she is painting and drawing every day. She has painted a mural for Berean Bible Church , where she is a member. She has designed a new stationery logo and jacket patch for the Newman Lake volunteer fire and rescue department, and is working on a commissioned piece for one of the firefighters. The piece will be a portrait of his son’s dog.
For her future creations, Lemley said, “I plan to continue with watercolor painting; exploring, learning and growing as an artist. It is my desire to combine my intrigue of colors and shapes in nature intertwined with the human face and figure into my next work.”
She is a member of the Spokane Watercolor Society and an Art Education Committee member at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture. She has shown at a handful of places and plans on more exhibits.
In her Newman Lake studio, she creates her work in a beautiful and peaceful setting. Her husband, Tim, did much of the woodwork along with the unique birdhouses and feeders that decorate their property. They often work together in the studio to create, as well as teach their grandchildren the art of making and appreciating art.
Her career today is day-to-day living mixed with the unexpected splash of imagination and motion, and is always begun with a prayer.