DIANA LINEBERRY and her daughter Jennifer Dossett are pictured with some
of the art in “Generations,” an art show at the Midway Branch that also
features art created by their three grandchildren/children. (Photo by
Bob Vlach)
The artistic talents of Diana Lineberry, her daughter Jennifer Dossett
and three grandchildren are featured in an art show appropriately named
“Generations” at the Midway Branch Library.
While her art has been in other shows, Lineberry says seeing her art
side-by-side with her daughter’s and grandchildren’s “is great.”
This is the first time in the history of the Midway Branch Library that
it has hosted an exhibition of intergenerational art, says programs
manager Suzanne Conrad.
Lineberry and Dossett say their journeys as artists began when they
participated in a free art class taught by Cindy Alvarado-Yeary at the
Midway library in January 2012. The class was a lot of fun and they
wanted to do more art. So they took an acrylics workshop taught by
muralist Christine Kuhn through the University of Kentucky.
“Once you start,” says Lineberry, 73, “you want to know more to get more
developed” as an artist. “I’m never satisfied,” she continues. “I’ll get
to a point and say, ‘Well, that’s the best I can do. That’s it.’ But …
I always think it could be different or it could be better or I needed
to tweak it somehow or other.”
She says creating art has made her more observant, opened her eyes to
the world around her.
While their artistic journeys may have begun in an art class taught by
Alvarado-Yeary at the Midway library, what this mother and daughter
create is very different. “That’s the best part about art,” says
Dossett, explaining how artists create differently.
Knowing two former students have progressed as artists and found their
innercreativity is gratifying to Alvarado-Yeary because they have an
avenue for expressing their emotions and feelings, she says. More
broadly, she says, “I find it so wonderful that the love for art has
gone down through three generations.”
While “I still paint when I can,” Dossett says life got a little too
busy for art after she married and was raising three kids – her daughter
Charlotte and his daughter Neko and son Robbie – in their blended family
of five.
None of their children consider themselves artistic, “which,” Dossett
says, “is bizarre to me because they turn out some of the most beautiful
things that I’ve ever seen.”
For this mom of three, art gets her mind off of everyday
responsibilities like grocery shopping, figuring out what they’re going
to have for dinner or planning for next week and what’s the weekend look
like? “It takes me out of that and I can actually focus on just
something fun,” she says, laughing.
The library didn’t have enough wall space for all of the art that
Lineberry and Dossett wanted in the show. So they had to “cull it down
to what you see. And we did our very best to go with colors that blended
and somewhat of a theme,” says Dossett.
She prefers working with watercolors and ink, but loves Neko’s quilted
piece. “I love the colors. I like how it looks chaotic,” she says. “… It
just reminds me so much of Neko.”
An aesthetic nurse for eight years, Dossett’s creative energy during her
workday is focused on cosmetic enhancement. “So I do artistic stuff with
faces,” she says. But she and her mom don’t like painting human faces.
They have volunteered for the Woodford Humane Society’s pet portrait
fundraiser, and had a lot of fun painting canine faces.
Before Lineberry retired and started painting, she was very creative
during her career as an elementary school teacher, Dossett says. One
piece in “Generations” speaks to her mom’s creativity.
“It’s just sticks and feathers,” says Lineberry, of the piece she called
Roadrunner, but renamed Free Range Chicken for the Midway Branch Library
art show, which continues through the end of August.