Artists talk about inspirations, processes for art

Those attending the Coutts Museum of Art’s artist reception Friday evening were treated to the works of two artists, Diana Werts and Stephen Perry.

After some music during the first part of the reception, the artists each talked about their art.

Werts has been teaching art for 20 years, as well as creating her own. She received her master’s degree from Wichita State University. Starting out teaching younger students, she is now in her sixth year of teaching high school art.

“This summer was a real treat for me when Terri (Scott, museum director) invited me to do a show,” she said.

She said it gave her a reason to paint all summer. She created all of the paintings on exhibit this year.

She said her true art teacher was the Flint Hills.

“I’ve spent my life keeping landscape painting close by,” she continued.

She said she always looks at how she can play with space and light.

Recently, she began looking at ways of making the traditional horizontal landscape vertical.

Those paintings portray the native grasses in the Flint Hills and their deep roots as well as their attempts to reach toward the sky.

“I love how the grasses connect the earth to the sky,” Werts said. “That was my inspiration for this body of work.”

All of her pieces on exhibit are oil paintings, except one set of six of woods near her yoga place, which are pastels.

One thing that has influenced her work was thumbnail sketches, which she said she learned about six or seven years ago.

She said she will take a photo and figure out the composition and darks and lights in the thumbnail.

“I work in a series,” she said, “so I go to a scene and photograph anything that catches my eye.”

She prints those out small and starts sketching.

She also often does some painting while at that location to study the scene and help guide her along.


Next, Perry talked about his start as an artist and his art process.

He said he was not always an artist.

“I have gotten here through a lot of little happenings,” he said. “The first thing I remember about wanting to be an artist is getting a book from the library on drawing boats.”

He went on to work for a landscape architect one summer. During that time, he found a book on Seattle cityscapes and enjoyed the sketches of the city.

Perry earned his degree in landscape architecture from Kansas State University. For his senior project, he did a character study of the Flint Hills.
Those sketches ended up being printed in a book.

“That was kind of the start of wanting to do pen and ink illustrations,” he said.

He began taking his illustrations to art fairs in the 1970s.

He also continued working as a landscape architect, eventually opening his own firm doing landscape architecture and illustrations. He did this for
nine years.

“I never really got away from doing the illustrations,” he said.
Then a couple of years ago he took early retirement.

He had become fascinated with the Prairie Print Makers. His father had a collection of his prints and passed some on to Perry.

“That made me think printmaking is what I wanted to get into,” he said.
He began doing that full time.

This year he began experimenting with solar plates for printmaking, which is a thin metal plate coated with a light-sensitive polymer.

“I’ve had fun experimenting with that process,” he said.

He also has done pen and ink drawings in the books for the Symphony in the Flint Hills and created the drawing of the kids for the welcome to El Dorado sign west of town.

Following the presentations, the artists visited with those in attendance and explained more about their work.