Scott Swanson
Judy Dean always has loved art, but she really didn’t get serious about it until four years ago, when a friend talked her into taking a painting class.
Dean has come a long way since then, churning out paintings that have won prizes at the Lane and Linn county fairs, and that she now sells from her gallery on Main Street in Sweet Home.
Dean, 69, moved to Sweet Home last year with her husband Dennis from Elmira, where they had raised their family and then retired.
It wasn’t her first time living here, though.
She was born near Vineta and Blue Jacket, Okla., the fourth-youngest of 14 children “whose names all start with J,” she said. “It was kind of like the ‘19 Kids and Counting’ on TV.
“We were all born at home, on the only hill around there,” added Dean, a very quiet woman who displays dry wit frequently when she does say something.
When she was 12, she said, her father lost his job with a railroad in Oklahoma and they moved to Sweet Home, where he became a carpenter.
The family settled down on Clark Mill Road and Judy attended Sweet Home High School but quit to get married in 1959, an experience she said she’d prefer not to discuss. During that marriage, which lasted 13 years, she had two children, Rodney and Lorinda.
She and Dennis, a building contractor, got married in 1976 in Eugene. After he retired, they decided to move to Sweet Home, in March of 2010.
She said a lot has changed over the years and she likes the community.
“It’s a lot cleaner and there are more flowers,” Judy said. “Things are a lot different now. There are more police patrols and it just seems like there’s a lot of nicer people. It is just comfortable. I don’t like big towns.”
Although she had “dabbled” in art over the years, growing up in a “poor” family didn’t give her an opportunity to pursue it seriously, Dean said. Her mother had talent, but never was able to do much with it.
“She scrounged up a few tubes of oil and she just did it on her own,” Dean said. “She was never famous or anything. I’m the only one of the 14 kids to ever take it seriously.”
She sketched and carved over the years until 2007, when a friend in Elmira talked her into taking an art class together.
“My friend begged me,” she said. “I didn’t want to. I didn’t like being around people – though I’m working on that,” she added, chuckling as she glanced around her gallery.
She took classes for a couple of years.
“I didn’t learn anything but the comaraderie was the best part.”
She started “chucking out paintings so fast that Dennis said we need a gallery or something,” she said.
Dean said she paints almost entirely from photographs.
“I don’t do other paintings. If anybody else has painted it, I’m not interested.”
She enjoys doing “critters and bugs and flowers” most of all. Horses are her favorite. She rode horses “since I could crawl up their front leg,” but has had to stop because of her age, she said. “It’s too painful now.”
After moving to Sweet Home, the Deans decided to open a gallery in a former chiropractic office at 1235 Main St. In addition to her paintings, which include landscapes and a portrait of her grandson (which isn’t for sale), they offer matting and framing services and a variety of art supplies in various rooms throughout the store. She also gives art lessons.
“I like teaching art,” she said.
Her talent has attracted notice. She told of a customer who stopped in just a week ago, who had taught art for 30 years.
“She said, ‘I see you have a style,’” Dean said. “I like detail.”
One of her first paintings, recently sold, which is displayed on her business card, shows a dragonfly on a flower, with intricate detail of the insect’s wings and eyes and of the flower.
The store currently has about 30 paintings on display, all done by Dean. Depending on the intricacy, she spends up to 40 hours on a painting, Dennis said.
“If it’s horses, I spend more time,” Judy said. “I like to do horses.”
She said art is just a natural form of expression.
“I can’t help myself. It’s just totally relaxing, peaceful. When I’m painting I don’t know time.
“I’m still learning. I’ll never quit learning. I’ll probably be famous after I’m dead. Isn’t that the way it works?”