Art talk: A celebration of the work and

Looking at the overlooked

dolores mitchell

“Everyone sees beauty in a rose, but an artist also sees beauty in a flat tire, a lump of mud, or a rusty tin can.” I believed those words spoken by my teacher in a Chicago Art Institute class for kids.

At age 12, I remember sketching the back of a derelict three-story apartment building. Porches were jammed with refrigerators and mattresses and broken bottles glittered in the weeds, but as I sketched, I saw beauty in the lines, shapes, and shadows. I knew then that I wanted to be an artist when I grew up. I continued to draw through high school, marriage, birth of a daughter, and getting degrees in painting and art history at UCLA. Although I didn’t have time and energy to paint during 30 years of teaching art history at CSUC, I continued to draw in museums, so I could explain to students how Matisse, for example, had structured his paintings.

Retirement meant “re-purposement” to me. I helped run Avenue 9 Gallery, volunteered to work on Art at the Matador, and conducted KCHO art interviews. I also taught OLLI classes and developed “Art Talk,” a monthly creativity blog. All of these opportunities I might not have had in Chicago, New York, or Los Angeles, where I’d lived before Chico. And, one more thing, I started to paint again.

I searched Chico and the countryside for painting motifs. Though I sketched such obvious beauties as the Senator Theater, rice fields, and the Sutter Buttes, I also drew what are often called eyesores—electricity pylons, prickly weeds, warehouses, water towers, and garbage bins.

was struck by the lineup of green plastic garbage bins waiting to be emptied into a truck. Back home, I sketched my own trio of bins with watercolor pens and then started painting the “Chico Bungalow Series: Garbage Day.” Garbage cans might be unsightly to some, but I see beauty in their sleek curves, glossy green surfaces, and jaunty black “hats”. To keep the whites of the dog and the man’s shirt from drawing attention from the bins, I painted a white car deep in the alley and alternating bands of sun and shadows that pointed to the bins.

In my “Chico Bungalow Series: Sun Shower,” a woman with an umbrella is about to slog down her muddy walkway. Sun sparkles on the lids of a pair of garbage bins in front of her bungalow and a duo of industrial water towers punctuates the sky behind it.

I’m forever grateful to my childhood art teacher for encouraging me to see overlooked beauty. To me, drawing and painting are forms of meditation that slow me down, sharpen my senses, and open my eyes to both obvious and neglected beauties around me.

I have paintings at The Red Tavern, Vagabond Rose, Chico Art Center’s Open Studios on line, and at www.doloresmitchellart.com.