5x5 Five Minutes, Five Questions Artist Carol Dickie

Eureka Springs artist Carol Dickie will show her work — which she creates with watercolor, gouache, acrylic, casein, pastel, charcoal, water soluable crayons and pencils on heavy watercolor paper, Claybord, Aquabord, treated Masonite, Yupo, collage — this weekend.
Eureka Springs artist Carol Dickie will show her work — which she creates with watercolor, gouache, acrylic, casein, pastel, charcoal, water soluable crayons and pencils on heavy watercolor paper, Claybord, Aquabord, treated Masonite, Yupo, collage — this weekend.

Carol Dickie loves nature. That defining truth is reflected not only in her paintings but in the choice of locales to show her artwork.

"This is my third show in about eight years at Karen Kinsel's beautiful cabin overlooking Beaver Lake," the Eureka Springs artist says of the place she'll exhibit this weekend. "Since that first show, which launched this artistic journey, wonderful things have happened. My work has been included in juried national art shows in both New York City and Los Angeles; it has been featured in a show at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art's Museum Store; and a first place in a regional art competition culminated in a solo show last year at Fort Smith's Regional Art Museum."

FAQ

‘What Matters Most’:

Paintings by Carol Dickie

WHEN — 10 a.m.-6 p.m. today-Sunday with a reception from 4 to 7 p.m. Saturday

WHERE — The Beaver Lake Office of Century 21, 324 Mundell Road, near Eureka Springs

COST — Free

INFO — caroldickiefineart.…

Here, Dickie answers five questions for What's Up!

Q. Do you remember the piece of art that first inspired you?

A. The first painting that made a deep impression on me, probably in junior high school, was a moody reproduction of El Greco's "View of Toledo," painted, amazingly, about 1597. I couldn't quit looking at the image and remember to this day the amazing clouds hanging low over the town and the way the buildings clung to the cliffs.

Q. Are you an artist by education or did you study to be something else?

A. I think I was born an artist, though I did not go to school for it. From a very early age I drew and painted. I took every art class allowed through high school but was counseled against becoming an artist because of the difficulty of making a living. So at Baylor University I studied English (so much more practical) with a minor in journalism. I fell in love with black and white photography in college and continued to make landscape photographs for years. Until I was in my mid-40s, I made my living as a journalist, a university public relations writer, a university instructor and, when I could no longer stand spending my life indoors, as the owner and operator of a landscaping business.

Q. How did you wind up working in your current medium and painting your current topics?

A. I have loved nature, especially the way light paints and transforms simple objects, from a very early age. My mother did, too, and always pointed out skies or birds or trees to me on our long walks together in our neighborhood in Austin, Texas. Our family spent a lot of time outdoors, fishing and camping, all across the west and in parts of the east from the southern Appalachians to western New York State. I have always desired to communicate my love of nature -- the connection I feel to all things when I am in a forest, say, or floating down a river.

I love loose watercolor paintings, too, the bursts of color mixed with water and its interaction with the watercolor paper. So I started taking watercolor classes in about 1998 and took several short courses over the next few years. But it was in the summer of 2003, when we were full-time RVers and serving as campground hosts near Creede, Colo., that I was first introduced to mixed watermedia painting by artist Stephen Quiller. His weeklong plein air class in the mountains around Creede opened that world to me, giving me a solid foundation for much of what I do today.

Q. How and why did you come to Eureka Springs?

A. Almost 12 years ago, after being on the road as full-time RVers for almost two years, my partner and I were looking for a place to put down roots. In the back of my mind, too, was my old dream of being an artist, which required a studio. We had looked out west, but various factors (lack of water, high prices, cold) had persuaded us to go east. We were headed over to the Mountain Home area, which I knew from fishing trips for trout below Bull Shoals Dam. But on a mid-October day, late in the afternoon, we saw a sign on Highway 62 east of Rogers directing us to a Corps of Engineers campground on Highway 187, on a lake as yet unknown to us.

Two weeks later we had a fixer-upper on Beaver Lake in contract and spent the next two years doing just that -- and in the fixing up we allowed for a studio with appropriate lights and storage on the bottom floor.

Call it what you will -- luck, the hand of fate, divine intervention -- but we wound up just 8 miles west of Eureka Springs, home to a vibrant community chock full of artists. Support from that community and the Grassy Knob community where we live has been vital to my survival and growth as an artist.

Q. If you got to write your epitaph as an artist, what would it say?

A. I really like something Vincent Van Gogh wrote: "Painters understand nature and love her and teach us to see her." Something akin to that would suite me just fine.

-- Becca Martin-Brown

[email protected]

NAN What's Up on 04/17/2015

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