Diana Boegel
boegelart@gmail.com
dianaboegel.com
Art has always been an important part of life for me. I come from a creative family on my dad’s side so I was always encouraged in my love of drawing and painting. My dad worked as a”lay-out man" in steel fabrication and in various shipyards in the Bay Area where we lived.Dad would bring home stacks of paper and large black crayons used in his line of work.I would use the blank side of the paper to do my drawings!
I could say I was an art hermit growing up. I preferred being alone, drawing, while the other kids were outside playing. Every summer beginning in 1953 I spent time at my grandparents cabin with my art supplies in tow.My grandparents lived in a wood cabin on a mining claim by Moccasin Creek close to the former town (now under water)of Jacksonville here in Tuolumne County. My memories of old weathered wood, old bottles and the smell of a wood- burning stove in their cabin is where I sometimes draw my inspiration and is a recurring theme in some of my work.
At the age of eight I was enrolled into art classes for children and teens at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland and continued until I was seventeen.Beginning at age eighteen I took adult extension classes at the same college for several years.I also took classes at junior colleges and privately but I was looking for more traditional training in fine art which was hard to find. By chance in 1993 I met a an artist named David Hardy who ran his own school called The Atelier of Classical Realism out of a funky storefront in Oakland.I brought in some of my drawings and David accepted me as a student.It was there I was opened up to the world of traditional painting and drawing. The work being produced by his students blew my mind! Eventually I assisted teaching alongside David until I moved to Sonora in 2018.
In addition to fine art,I have studied calligraphy and illumination as well as scientific illustration. Today my focus is on oil painting but I also work in pastel or choose to draw with pencil or charcoal. I have taught privately, have entered competitions, had a one-woman show and have participated in group shows and in art fairs. My work is collected in the U.S. and abroad and on permanent exhibit at Las Trampas,Inc.,a non-profit organization which supports adults with developmental difficulties, located in Lafayette,Ca.
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