One of my greatest pleasures is making an idea come to life on my drawing board or easel. When my work is going well, I lose all sense of time and place. I’m totally immersed in a world of color, light, form, and design. Ideas seem to come from somewhere beyond me and I just follow them where they take me. When I’m done for the day, I feel at peace with the world.

 

I’ve learned to recognize that inspiration can come from anywhere. One time it will come from a pair of shoes I see in a thrift shop, the next, perhaps, a lobster at the beach. Sometimes one painting will lead to another and I find I’ve done a series. It seems the more artwork I do, the more things that I see that I want to capture in my art.

 

Though in the past I’ve done mostly commissions, I’ve reached the point in my life where I want to create art purely for my own enjoyment. I feel that as long as I do what excites me, I’ll have fun, my work will remain fresh, and hopefully other people will enjoy what I’ve done as well.

 

 In the art world, it seems to me that there are hierarchies:

Painting is better than drawing.

Acrylic is better than watercolor.

Abstraction is better than realism.

Mixed Media is better than a single medium.

In my opinion none of these pronouncements are true. Good art is good art, no matter what medium or style is used.  

 

I enjoy a realistic style, but I believe my choice of media is far from traditional.  Over the years, I’ve painted in oils, acrylic, transparent watercolors, guache, and tempra, but I keep coming back to colored pencil on mylar. To me it’s an exciting and yet comfortable media.

 

Unlike paper which is opaque, the mylar that I use for my work is semi-transparent. I think it gives my work a luminosity that I’m unable to get with paper. I’m able to apply color to both the front and back of the page to gain a greater color saturation and to add other dimensions in layering.

 

Though drawing is essential in my layout and design, I don’t consider what I do with colored pencils to be drawing. Just as many people draw with a paintbrush, I paint with a colored pencil. I seldom use lines. I apply layer after layer of color to make the forms and contours that make up the finished piece.

 

With every piece that I do I find new challenges and find new ways of solving design problems. I’m always learning. I can’t think that I’ll ever tire of creating artwork. Who knows what the future will bring. For now, I’m having the time of my life with my artwork.

 

 

 Dorothy DePaulo was born and has lived most of her life in Colorado. From early childhood it had always been her dream to be an artist, but it wasn’t until she had worked many years as a registered nurse that she had the opportunity to attend the Colorado Institute of Art where she majored in graphic design.

 

     Since that time she has worked freelance as a muralist, a portraitist, and an illustrator of a children’s book and paper dolls for Doll Reader and Teddy Bear Magazines. For a time she worked as a teddy bear artist, designing and making a variety of stuffed animals.

     She resides with her husband Jim, in Lakewood, Colorado where they have a minature urban farm which includes a small garden, a dog, several bantam chickens and a few homing pigeons.