by Robin Milligan
Dianne Lemley is a talented artist who has lived a life full of hardships, love, and fulfilled dreams. Her work is layered and deep, and asks the viewer to step a little closer and be rewarded with surprise details, letters, and musical scores.
Dianne’s paintings are reflections of her past, her hopes and dreams, her inner world, and the world in which she finds so much beauty. They contain actual pieces of her life.
I met Dianne when I was a curator years ago. The first thing I saw was her smile and her bright eyes. She has a warmth in her presence that I feel has aided her success in teaching first grade.
Dianne’s friend Liz Bishop and her husband, Tim, helped hang her artwork; I only had to stand back and watch, offering guidance when a question was asked.
I could tell that the three of them were a lot of fun. They were all so polite and finished the job lightning fast. It looked great; her work really shined.
At first, her work appeared to be simply well-executed flowers painted in oil paint on canvas. One in particular caught my eye. Maybe 2 feet across, in tones of white and green, a beautifully crafted water lily. The lily pads glistened and the pedals looked soft. I had to get a closer look.
Up close, it was clear I had misjudged the work. Under the shine of the oil paint and finish, there were collages in pieces of life. Memories in solid form.
Selections of sheet music (that I later learned were torn from one of her many amazing great aunt’s music books), bits of lace and fabric, impressions of plants, magazine photos, and handwritten words can all be found in her work. While not every piece contains collage, every one does deserve a closer look.
The depth of color and detail are beautiful to dive into. But it isn’t only aesthetics with Dianne. She’s a deep-thinking humanitarian, and a brave artist.
Her paintings often begin with splashes of ink, drips, and playful color. She pushes herself through experimentation of techniques and materials. The most surprising material in the water lily piece that I loved, she told me, was spray paint.
Dianne Lemley began her artist journey as a painter of realism in watercolor. Translucent, water-based paintings take a lot of patience and knowledge to master. Dianne shared with me that she has loved art since she was a little girl, always drawing and coloring.
Dianne said she always wanted to be a wife, a mother, a teacher, and an artist. She accomplished all of that.
Dianne said, “Art was my favorite subject in elementary school. There was an art room and I loved going there. As soon as I walked in the room, I could smell all the wonderful smells of all the art materials. And the teacher was beautiful and flamboyant looking; she was very inspiring. I thought, ‘This is my favorite place to be.’”
She continued, “I took art classes through high school, and when I was a senior, the art teacher, who taught my father when he was in high school, came out of retirement to substitute for our class for the year. It felt like a full circle sort of thing. She was a little tiny lady, well into her 80s, and she would get up on the table to pose for our figure drawings.” We both laughed.
Dianne worked for a year and moved to Ellensburg to attend Central Washington University where she took classes in both education and art.
“I met this wonderful man there, on campus. We got married in the fall and he got a teaching job in Lynnwood, Wash. We had a baby and I loved being a mom and being at home with my baby. All our friends were teachers, and I still wanted to be a teacher, but it wasn’t the right time then,” she said.
They moved to Chicago for a year and then back to Spokane in 1966 where her husband, Roger Kinnune, got a job teaching Sociology at Spokane Falls Community College (SFCC).
When her daughter started kindergarten, Dianne started taking art classes at the college where her husband worked. She took figure drawing there and an instructor, Dick Ibach, suggested to her to break away from realism where she was already quite proficient. This is when her work started to become exciting to her.
Her family lived out in Greenacres, Wash., at this time, on their two-acre organic farm. They grew nearly everything they ate. Roger and their three children worked right along with her. He worked on their farm after his classes every day and on weekends.
Roger was a dynamic teacher. Dianne often brought the children to the lecture hall at SFCC where he taught so they could hear his lectures. He also encouraged Dianne to follow her dreams and go back to college to get her teaching degree. She attended Whitworth University for art and education. She graduated in 1980 on the day that Mt. Saint Helens covered the Pacific Northwest in ash.
She was a substitute teacher for two years. “I learned so much,” she said. “I am so thankful for that experience. I could see all the different teaching styles and the classroom set ups. It was such a blessing.”
She added, “We had our wonderful little farm and the kids were all graduating high school and going off to college and weren’t around as much to help with all the gardening, so we found a lot in the valley and bought it. We designed the house we wanted to build and found a wonderful builder to work with us. While the house was being built, however, Roger died unexpectedly.” She continued, “It was so hard. Our oldest was pregnant and we all felt like our futures had been taken from us. The children had planned to ride with their dad to college every day.”
Dianne said her family, friends, and church were wonderfully supportive and helped her through. Her husband had been the Fire Commissioner for Spokane Valley, and when the house was finished, the firemen brought all of their belongings to the new house. They moved in on the day that would have been Dianne and Roger’s 26th wedding anniversary.
She was a first-grade teacher in the Central Valley School District for 16 years, which was always her life dream. In 1989, Dianne completed her Master of Arts in Teaching degree with an emphasis in art.
For a year-and-a-half, she was selected for a special assignment to go out to all the schools in the district to improve and standardize the art curriculum for the elementary schools. She examined, planned, and modeled teaching the new lessons, and hosted workshops for other teachers.
When Liberty Lake Elementary School opened, she transferred there and taught second and third grade where she had art in the classroom every day. Journaling counted as art – the children could write or draw in their journals to express themselves in whatever manner was easiest for them. The children were taught how to look at art, how to think about it, how to talk about it, and how to write about it. Then, they were taught how to make art.
Dianne Lemley in her studio. Courtesy Tim Lemley.
“I was very fortunate to be a wife, a mother, a teacher, and an artist.” Dianne beamed.
A few weeks before her husband passed, the couple sold their lot on the shore of Newman Lake to a man named Tim Lemley, who Dianne remembered as the name of her teenage crush. They had never met, but she remembered watching him water ski across the lake during the summers and thinking he was the cutest boy on the lake. Dianne and Roger were so glad to sell the land to someone local who would appreciate it.
About a year later, Dianne’s brother suggested that the two of them visit Tim, and see if he was enjoying the property. Friends and family were trying to push her to remarry, but Dianne was reluctant to try to date again.
Her brother insisted on her going with him to meet up with Tim, and the two men talked a bunch about boats and then Dianne and her brother left. Dianne went back to her brother’s cabin a few days later, getting some sun on his dock, when Tim came up beside her. It turned out that her brother’s neighbor was Tim’s family friend, and they were having a potluck. Tim invited Dianne, and she reluctantly went with him.
A few days later, Tim called her at home and asked her to go somewhere with him, as friends.
The two became good friends and hung out more and more. Tim had been recently divorced, so they both shared their experiences and grief over their lost first marriages. They were married three years from the day on the dock, driving off in Dianne’s 1959 Corvette convertible.
“It was God’s plan for me. I didn’t want to get remarried, or date anyone. Everything just fit together. I had my plan, but his was better,” Dianne said.
When Dianne and Tim built her art studio, Anchorart Studio, she thought she would teach there. Tim built her a huge, beautiful worktable, short enough for children, where their great-grandchildren color when they come over. Dianne said her great-granddaughter is her biggest critic, and also a consistent source of inspiration.
It was a workshop in Queen Creek, Arizona at the Milan Art Institute which she took with an artist friend that really changed the way she painted and helped her develop her style. She learned about experimenting with new techniques, and developing her own voice in art. Before the Milan Art Institute, she was pretty much working only in realism in watercolor. She said she hasn’t really created a watercolor painting since, but likely will.
Today, you can find Tim and Dianne living on Newman Lake, where she first saw him waterskiing as a teen. She’s married to “the cutest boy on the lake” and they have an adorable home with a great view. Dianne invites anyone who would like to check out her work and visit her studio, to contact her for an appointment at 509-389-8611 or [email protected].
Robin Milligan is an artist and entrepreneur living in Spokane. She curates art shows, runs an IT company, and teaches ceramics and painting from her home studio. When not working, Robin spends her time with her three children exploring nature, rockhounding, making art, and swimming.
