Portfolio of Works

As a young architect, I hated to add trees to my pristine drawings of buildings. I did not do them well – I hated my trees! In retirement I took up painting, hoping I might finally learn to draw a tree I didn’t hate.  This 20-year “quest” continues, but what was once a burden - drawing a darned old tree - has become a love affair. Trees, I’ve learned, are endlessly individual, strongly expressive, reliably beautiful and seductively mysterious models.  And they hold still.

This continuing series on antique grain elevators aims to preserve some important memories.  Grain elevators were the skyscrapers of my youth - they were the only substantial vertical accents on the high plains of southwestern Nebraska.  They were hand-built in those days, of wood timbers with tightly joined wood sheathed double walls to keep the grain inside and the weather out.  In time, most of the wood exteriors were covered with galvanized metal sheeting.  They were our landmarks -you knew you were getting close to town as the grain elevator became visible on the horizon, then next you'd see the water tower and finally the church steeples.   The elevators on which this series of paintings are freely based are ones I have observed and photographed on many drives from my home in Texas, through Kansas and to Nebraska - I'm sad to say half had been demolished as of my last drive in 2010.

I was a town-kid in a rural community, but just barely.  Our neighbor had horses and we had chickens in the back yard, my first "job" at age 7 or 8 was helping our neighbor veterenarian.  But I lived my professional life in big cities planning hospitals and medical centers for urban settings.  I loved the life and work, but in art I am attracted by the rural - openness of the plains and the "sense of the soil" in agrarian settings.  Sentimental I admit - things did certainly seem more simple, sound and secure when I was a bare-foot kid on the edge of McCook, Nebraska.  Curious also -as I was born in 1937, in the midst of the worst hard times of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, but somehow we kids made it "good times" - in fact, the best ever.

Darlene comes from a family of quilters and one of her first memories is watching her fraternal grandmother piece quilts.  She started her quilting career in the early 1990s and has produced more than 100 pieces including king size quilts and wall hangings--many have been gifts to family members, some donated to charity fundraisers and many remain in her private collection.

This is a mix of my travel sketches and other doodles, some done for pleasure - a pastime - and some to pass time (as in, waiting at the dermatologist's, the car-wash line, etc.).  Most of the sketches are done on gray recycled paper in black ink with white charcoal highlights.