Some artists paint for money;
others paint for life. Marie and Roger Granat paint for the relaxation and pleasure
of trying a new technique, or a new style.
This
couple is enjoying retirement from full-time careers by doing what they want
and when they want.
Their home is a gallery. From the
front entrance though out the home, each room displays Marie’s decorative tole
paintings on glass, metal, and wood while Roger’s pen and ink framed sketches are
displayed across shelves, the mantel and on walls.
Different style and techniques
reflect the wife’s and husband’s artistic individuality: decorative painting
for Marie and pin and ink for Roger.
Marie probably
has more pieces on display in their home, yet she said. “I really don’t have a
favorite. I enjoy painting everything,” Marie confesses with a smile. “I like
painting Christmas ornaments, the snowmen and especially Santa.” She shows off
her plethora of Santa designs, patterns and finished pieces.
“I have given away all of my
Christmas ornaments to neighbors as gifts and a few sold at the Farmer’s Market
downtown.”
“It is still fun. It is how I
relax, my stress reliever,” she admits. Marie is the only Palisade member of
the Grand Junction chapter of Western Colorado Decorative Artists, but she
wants to learn more and go to National seminars in Ohio or Las Vegas, which she
has heard about but never attended.
Her chapter hosted a two-day
seminar at First Congressional Church in Grand Junction last weekend, April 4-5
and sponsored well-known National Certified Decorative Artist Karen Hubbard
from Oregon to teach two complicated techniques that she had created.
“It was fantastic to meet Karen and
follow her lessons. In one afternoon we completed a Goldfinch, and on Saturday
we painted a bear cub surrounded by Columbines, the State flower. I am still
working on that pattern,” She showed off both pieces on her work desk, along with
several other paintings in various stages of completion.
Marie learned decorative tole
painting in 1995. “We were living in Denver, and our Minister’s wife Julie
invited me over one afternoon to see what she does. When I saw her art, I wanted to learn how to do that. We
went to classes at night. That’s how I learned to paint.”
Eighteen years later she is honing
her skills, but if any one praises her talent, she is quick to say, “My husband
Roger is an artist too.
“He does the pen and ink drawings
hanging there. He has always been behind me. He gives me critiques. Tells when
I do it good, and tells me when I don’t. Helps me out too.
Both of them are “in-house critics
for each other.”
Marie follows a pattern, yet she
stylizes through the acrylic colors and brush strokes. She continues to take
classes and challenges herself to try more complicated techniques.
Roger paints free hand about
objects, animals and places he has seen. His primary subjects are drawn in pen-and-ink: wild game and
mountain landscapes familiar and meaningful to him and his family. He never
took any classes in drawing; he learned by practicing sketching his favorite
subjects.
The Granat family are hunters and
campers for generations in the mountains they love. His drawings of buffalo,
elk, mountain goats are finely detailed noble replicas of the animals both
Marie and Roger have seen and harvested together.
He admits he was in the 6th
grade when “I took six classes from Mrs. Capp, a professional oil painter up on
East Orchard Mesa. Roger proudly
points out the one landscape in oil that he painted of his grandfather’s
favorite spot.
“My folks started me on them. Then
we got busy working in the orchards in the Vine lands.”
This couple has been friends since childhood.
Their parents were neighboring orchard growers in the Vineland, so the kids
grew up almost like siblings, playing, camping and going through everything
together. “I treated Marie and her
sister like they were my own sisters,” Roger Granat said with a smile as he
described how he knew his wife as a child.
Born and raised in Palisade, both went
to Palisade High School. But after graduating, they went in different
directions. Roger in 1960 stayed in the Vine lands where he bought an orchard before
he was 17. Marie graduated in 1966
and moved to Denver, just because “I wanted to live in the big city,” she said.
Both had married others and
divorced, but Marie came back to her hometown for a visit and reconnected with
Roger when both families were rebuilding a neighbor friend’s barn.
They married and lived in Denver
for eight years until 2002, when they moved back to be close to family. In 1986
Roger said he won with his entry in Palisade Art League’s contest. In 1989 he
sold his first pen-and ink of a deer head to a friend.
The next year he just stopped—“no drawing,
no painting, nothing. Started back
in 2011, because I need something to do.”
Maybe he got back in the artistic
mood because he became Mayor of Palisade in 2010. Maybe because he and Marie
are retired, and have the time to enjoy doing what they want to do, Maybe it is
because Roger has to stay busy.
Whatever the reason Roger Granat is
back in the artistic mood.
“I do it just to relax. I’ll see
something when we are out hunting or camping, I snap a photograph of something,
come home sketch it out.
“It is a challenge just to see if I
can.”
Like his wife, his is talent is
evident. Both use their art talent “to relax,” and “to see if I can do it.”
Few people will see all the art that
husband and wife have or will produce.
They don’t promote their talent for
the money or livelihood. They do it to relax, enjoyment and the challenge of
doing something new the best way they can.
Freelance
writer Brenda Evers can be reached at brendabevers@hotmail.com
1050 words
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