Pasque flowers inspire winning art for RF poster

By Linda Bell
Correspondent

Karen Deane's detailed colored pencil illustration of pasque flowers, titled "Heralds of Spring," garnered top honors from the Red Feather Lakes community and will be the featured art on the 2006 Fine Arts Festival poster.

The community voted on nine entries in this year's poster contest, and Deane's piece won in a very close race, according to Marilyn Colter, treasurer of the Fine Arts Festival committee.

Deane will be awarded $250 at the festival's kick-off reception at the Property Owners Association building on May 26. Deane said her finished illustration is a reverse image of an original pencil sketch that she transferred to another paper for coloration and detail.

Deane is a graduate of the University of Louisville in Kentucky with a bachelor's degree in design. Even before graduation, Deane said, she was hired by Channel 15 in Louisville, a public television station, to be a graphic artist for "Television in the Classroom," a series produced at the station for the local school district.

Deane moved to Colorado from Kentucky in 1994 and soon became interested in photographing the wealth of wildflowers in and around Red Feather Lakes. She sold her photographic prints and greeting cards at previous arts festivals in Red Feather Lakes, as well as prints of her drawings.

"Although I usually don't draw wildflowers as a main subject," Deane said, "they often appear in the background of my whimsical drawings for children." After she finished the pasque flowers, she said, she decided she might create a series of flower drawings.

Deane's illustration of a bear was requisitioned for the second annual Fine Arts Festival poster in 1997, before the choice was left to the community through an annual contest that started in 2000.

For the past five years Deane has been children's program director at Red Feather Lakes Library. She said her job really complements her art since she can observe first-hand what young children visually enjoy through books. Eventually she wants to put some of her art and stories together for publication, she said.

Deane will be the featured artist at the library in September where many more examples of her illustrative work will be on display.