In my quest to find standout South Carolinians, I looked no further than my mother-in-law, Diane Frick. Yes, we do get along! In fact I’m honored to call Diane my friend, mentor and nature-loving fellow.

Diane is a self-taught painter recently coming out of her shell like a beautiful butterfly. She has a magic touch with pencils and pastels. When you look at her flower drawings you could almost smell their perfume. In her art you’ll find soul, gentleness, humor and a pure love for life as it comes.

This post is a candid introduction into Diane’s wonderful world.
Make sure to visit Diane’s online gallery to get your hands on one of kind art prints gifts!

What inspires you to draw and paint?
That’s hard to explain. It’s just part of who I am. I see or think about something and my brain starts putting it on paper long before my hands get to work. Sometimes I wake up or go to sleep thinking about a picture. I can go for weeks or even a month without drawing and then one day it’s like “I have to do this and I have to do it now!”

For me drawing it’s like breathing, something I have to do to be happy.

What are your favorite subjects?
I don’t really have a favorite subject. An idea will just pop into my head. Sometimes I start on it immediately and sometimes I will just file it away and let it work itself out in the back of my mind. Some pictures never make it out because they can’t seem to develop.

I seem to have a natural ability to draw flowers and they lend themselves so well to pastels and pencils. I love it when I finish one up and see it hanging somewhere just inviting you to reach out and pick it.

Why do you prefer to work with pencils and pastels?
Pencils travel well and lend themselves to small pieces of work. While traveling I always carry a selection of pencils (pastel, colored, water color, graphite, etc) along with small pads and watercolor paper. I sit down and sketch on a mountain side, on the beach or on a ship.

Pastels fascinate me. You can’t mix colors like you do with paints. You have to blend and layer. You have to figure it all in advance to get what you want. I love the challenge of making pastels work on all kinds of surfaces. They are simply breath taking when done on black paper.

Do you have a favorite artwork?
“The Lone Tree” means a lot to me. I drew it from 20 years old California trip photo and I’ve only allowed myself to use the 25 colors in the graphite pencil set. It made me realize that I really do have a talent.

How do you make use of light and colors?
I don’t really think about light and color when I am working. I have had artists tell me I don’t “follow the rules”. I don’t think Grandma Moses did either and everybody raved about her work.

I observe what others do with light, colors, shading, etc and I admit my work it’s now showing more maturity in that respect, but I will never let concern for rules of color and light get in the way of doing the picture my way. I am an individualist and I want my work to look like my work not someone else’s.

Is there any artist that you admire and why?
I admire all of them and can see something in almost everyone’s work that I like. I look at how they handle different things and adapt that idea to my work. I think that’s how we learn as artists.

Monet fascinates me. I love the abstraction of the objects in his pictures. He doesn’t seem to be as involved in the detail as in the colors and relationship of objects in his pictures. I think he allows you to use your imagination and see the details for yourself.

And now let’s talk about life simple pleasures…
• Favorite food: Seafood, especially crab cakes and crab claws. I can’t live without my daily dose of Coca Cola.
• Favorite book and movie: Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are” and “Song of the South”
• Favorite song: The Music of the Night from “Phantom of the Opera”
• Favorite place to relax: By the pool, snuggled up in my chair reading a chick book
• Favorite place to go on vacation: Anywhere, I love to travel
• Things that make me laugh: My granddaughter having a good time, animals being themselves and my best friend Lynda
• Things that drive me crazy: TV commercials
• My biggest blooper: Spraying a painting with fixative only to have it disappear and had to start all over.

In a different life I would like to come back as a cat…

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