Artist Fran Dorr
Dawn Price with Fran Dorr
I recently met up with SaddleBrooke Fine Arts Guild member Fran Dorr at her lovely home and was lucky enough to view some of her artwork. It is clear that she is an eclectic and intuitive painter. She likes all media but is drawn to acrylics, watercolor, collage, and alcohol inks and uses them to recreate nature scenes, animals, birds, flowers, and sky.
Fran shared that she grew up in a creative, artistic atmosphere, with family members who were involved in the arts. Her father was a watercolor artist and art director, her aunt was a famous ballerina, and her sister danced as well, while her brother was a writer and musician. Her sister once scolded her for saying she wasn’t an artist, which she said was because she didn’t earn a degree in art school nor try to reproduce the exact details seen in photos. Her sister responded that if a person paints, they are an artist, whether it is as a hobby or a business. That was a “Wow!” moment for Dorr.
As a high school student, she was able to further her knowledge by taking some young-adult art classes at Rhode Island School of Design and then, when she was older, she added photography and graphic arts classes as a graduate assistant in the broadcasting department at a Michigan university. Two classes that changed her artistic clarity were basic courses in beginning design and basic principles of art, which she took years later at Eastern Michigan University.
Dorr moved to SaddleBrooke in 2004 and soon took her first good beginning watercolor class at the Guild where her skills blossomed. She has gone on to show her work in Tucson, Tubac, Northern Michigan, and Florida.
Sharing her perspective on art, Dorr said, “Some of the best art I have ever seen is that which was done by children under 5 years old. It is spontaneous and colorful. When a child turns five, adults and teachers start teaching children how they think a tree should look, what colors are appropriate for the tree, etc., so the child colors the trunk brown and the top of the tree green. From there on, the spontaneity is gone, and defined ways of depicting subjects are set. When someone says they don’t know how to draw or paint, to me, it is because, as children, they were damaged to believe that if they couldn’t replicate a photograph, they weren’t artistic. That is how I felt when I was young.”
Dorr states that she runs into many people in SaddleBrooke who are afraid to take classes because they feel they will embarrass themselves. “Residents here who were taking classes back in the early 2000s when I started taking classes have enhanced their skills exponentially; have been accepted in state, regional, and national art shows; and have won lots of awards! When you take beginning art classes, you are taught the rules that have been applied to art for centuries, and you develop new ways of seeing things. New students shouldn’t be intimidated by more experienced classmates who may be professional artists. It took them years to get to the level they are at. It’s a mental and physical odyssey.”
Fran enjoys volunteering at Art & Wine events and the Art Sampler classes.
To find out more about meeting times or class offerings for artists of all skill levels, check the website www.saddlebrookefinearts.org.