Plein air artist connects with God, man, nature

The “Texas Landscape” exhibit of plein air painter, Dina Gregory, closes Sunday, Nov. 26. On display at Baker Goodwin Fine Art, 100 W. Washington Ave. since Oct. 28, Gregory’s work captures the beauty and mystique of the Texas landscape with soft pastels, brights lights and deep darks. Her favorite locations are the Texas Hill Country, Palo Duro Canyon and the Big Bend where she seeks to convey “the connection between God, man and nature.”

From the French ‘en plein air’ meaning ‘open air’ and pronounced ‘plan air,’ Gregory’s paintings provide a visual history of the changing Texas landscape and her personal journey is a reminder of changing times.

Navasota anecdotes

The Navasota-born, former Rattler twirler said, “I always liked art but we had no art in Navasota schools at that time. None. In high school, there was mechanical drawing and all I knew about it was it had the word ‘drawing’ in it so I signed up for it.”

She continued, “They told me ‘No. Girls can’t take mechanical drawing.’ That gives you an idea of the era. My dad was on the school board and I said ‘Daddy, can’t you do something?’ He said no. It’s a rule.”

Responding to this artistic void was renown Navasota artist Kathleen Blackshear and fellow artist Ethel Spears, who retired to Navasota after distinguished teaching careers at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Gregory said, “Kathleen was a wonderful painter of Navasota, the cotton fields, the blacks and their families, their homesteads and all that. Ethel did humorous paintings of the Depression era.”

She continued, “They decided to teach art in their attic and set up an art class there. There were several of us taking it. I was about 13 years old. It was all new to me, brand new.”

Gregory said, “They set stuff on the table for us to paint. One day they went next door and got a neighbor’s baby and brought her over! She could sit up and they set her on the table. It was so cute! That’s the way they were. We worked in charcoal and pastels. That’s kind of important because that comes back to me later.”

Eye openers

After her graduation in the mid-60s, Gregory enrolled at Sam Houston State Teachers College, as it was known at the time, focused on an art degree.

She said, “A lot of kids from Houston went to Sam Houston. They were so bored with the freshman art class but I never had it. I didn’t know what printmaking was, or how to spin a pot. They’d done it all in high school. This was all really new to me. It was so neat!”

She continued, “My first summer there, the Art and Spanish classes took a group of kids to Puebla, Mexico. That was an eye opener. I studied their art history which involved Frida and Diego Rivera. We’d take bus trips on the weekends, with the chickens and everything else in the bus, to Mexico City and do tours. They had murals everywhere. They were on the office buildings of the government. We studied the churches and painted those. I took oil painting and art history of Mexico. I took lots of art classes. I loved them all.”

Second wind

Life happens and it wasn’t until her sons were in college that Gregory finished her degree at the University of North Texas. Following her move to Glen Rose in the mid-90s and a brief stint teaching art, Gregory decided she wanted to paint, not teach. She enrolled in art classes in Granbury and took some outdoor classes in Taos and Fredericksburg under the instruction of pastel artist Bob Rohm and Colorado artist and mentor Lorenzo Chavez.

Gregory said, “I never really understood what plein air meant. I knew people painted outdoors but I didn’t really get it. Now here I am, with my pastels painting outdoors. I’m a passionate Southwest plein air painter!”

Alluding to some “crazy, fun stuff “ painting outdoors, Gregory said, “I never feel alone. There’s always something out there whether it’s a jackrabbit or birds. You just don’t know when you go out there what will happen, what memory you’ll have. You get connected to the scene you’re painting.”

She added, “Something that’s happened to me more times than I can remember is that scenes get changed from when I painted them, either by man or by nature."

For instance, flooded creeks in Glen Rose which rearranged rocks and sand and the bulldozing of the riverbank under a local bridge, all which irreversibly altered the terrain.

Gregory said, “I like for people to look at my work and think ‘I want to go there,’ or that it gives them a feeling of peace or warmth, or maybe excitement…just to get feelings going.”

Finding joy

Gregory credits the internet with assisting today’s artists with art’s business side and said, “I didn’t get a lot of education on that but now you can pull up all kinds of ways to sell your art besides galleries.”

Gregory’s paintings have been featured in Southwest Art, Plein Air Magazine, American Art Collector and Art of the West.

Until its recent closing, Gregory’s paintings were displayed at the Martha Stafford Fine Art Gallery in Marble Falls for nearly a decade and some are currently on exhibit at the Old Spanish Trail Gallery and Museum in Fort Davis. Most recently, her work was shown at the Bryan Museum in Galveston in “Visions of the West, Art Untamed,” a show and fundraiser for the museum.

Gregory thinks it’s important, regardless of age, to find something you like to do.

She said, “It gives you joy. It helps you stay young if you’ve got something to do that’s creative.”