Lake Bluff Artist Continues to Share Her Gift With Others

“I met Diane maybe nine years ago and started taking art classes from her and she’s really become a friend,” said Jill Pilarski, of Lake Forest, who takes classes from well-known, award-winning, fine-art painter and teacher Diane Rath at Stirling Hall in Lake Forest. “She’s an amazing person. She always looks at everything with appreciation and a positive attitude."

It’s a common sentiment in Lake Forest and Lake Bluff, and when Rath, a nationally known oil painter in her 50’s learned on Jan. 1 of this year that she had Stage 4 colon cancer – the disease metastasizing, spreading throughout her vital organs, the community immediately showed its appreciation and support for her. 

In one significant gesture, Artists on the Bluff, a local arts group, organized a successful gallery opening and sale of Rath paintings to help the uninsured artist pay her medical bills. Rath spent the evening smiling, talking with guests until the very end.

Despite cancer throughout her body, Rath’s calmness, positive energy, focus, and expertise are mesmerizing to her students and acquaintances. She continues to paint and teach painting. Rath recently also said her work has never had as much focus as it does today.

“I think my work has gone up a huge notch since I was told this information,” she said.

Classically trained in representational art, her still-lifes of food and pottery, and landscapes, are sold in galleries from New Mexico to Maine.

“Diane is one of the finest still-life painters I have ever known and that we have represented in our 40 years of business,” said Jennifer Gentry, manager, Joe Wade Fine Art, in Sante Fe, NM. “We refer to them as ‘still-lifes,’ but we shouldn’t because they have this spirit and quality much like her.  They’re not ‘still.’"

Among her many awards, Rath has won: Best of Signature Members Award, Oil Painters of America (OPA) National Show (2007); Third Place Award, International Artist Magazine Flower Painting Competition (2006); and the American Women Artists’ Outstanding Work Award (2002). Speaking also to the level of her work, she periodically joins the Putney Painters, the elite group of American and international Realism artists renowned for landscapes, portraits and still life.

Susan Powell Fine Art, in Madison, Conn., has been selling Rath’s work for four years. “Her paintings have a wonderful color and freshness, and a lot of people respond to that, especially to her florals and still-lifes and foods,” said the gallery’s namesake owner.

Real feeling in paintings

Rath, who has been painting her entire life, was encouraged early on by her mother. Describing one of her works, “Ringing the Bells,” pointing out a green, bell-shaped plant and delicate, colorful, bloomed flowers, the artist said, respectively, “this is a painting of my mother and me. My mother loved Bells of Ireland and those were (her) favorites. These are Lisianthus, my favorite. I put these together and thought about my mother and me.

“She taught me art, and to do what I like. When I wasn’t picked to be on the baseball team, she told me not to worry and do what I do,” Rath continued.  “Painting is a language.”

So, with nary a hint of fear in her face or spoken voice, Rath continues painting and teaching, speaking of love, patience and appreciation through her brush.

“Everything that I paint, I’m looking at. I set it up in front of me, so I don’t make it up in my head. It’s ‘representational art’ – I re-present what’s in front of me, whether it’s landscape or otherwise. It is real.”

Continued Rath:  “I believe every painting is a story. A lot of my paintings evolve from things I might see at a grocery store, (or) the farmers market, and I have a beautiful collection of pots and vessels. And they have feeling.”

Describing a work called “Farmers Market,” she explained, “This is a painting of gratitude for things. There are two cabbages in this painting, a purple cabbage and a green one – they are back to back, and there’s a pot behind them. Two people not seeing eye to eye, they’re back to back, but there’s resolution. The pot, there’s the handle, (holds) these things together. As I start painting, these things start emerging, but they are my stories. So, if I have a painting and a story, other people will look at it and create their own story.

“I do it for myself, and then I teach people how to paint. I think my painting classes are very unusual and unique. They go far beyond moving a paint brush and learning which colors to use. My classes teach people how to love life more. I believe our paintings mirror our lives.”

Marathon paint classes

Her Lake Forest classes are six hours in length.

“It sounds like a long time, but in this process, people can watch one demonstration, go work on their painting, and when they’re ready, I do another demonstration, and then they do more,” said the artist, who also teaches oil painting at the prestigious Palette & Chisel Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago and the American Academy of Art, and gives even the occasional workshop in Mexico.

Well educated herself, Rath has two degrees, post-graduate study and training under some of the most renowned artists in her field. A single mother of three children all in their 20’s – none are artists but one wants to open a bakery, Rath also knows what her students, many of whom are women, desire and get out of her classes.

“They take this time for themselves, and then they go out and be a better person, better mother, wife, friend, because they’re happy,” she noted.

Like Pilarski, Lake Forest resident Judy Gleason, another Rath student and now friend who originally met the artist at a Latin dance class, described what it’s like to learn from Rath.

“She’ll take you forward through the mastery of lessons in five weeks and you’ll learn how to paint. And all the while caring, compassionate, kind,” Gleason shared.

Still, at a recent class in January, Gleason could see that heightened level of focus Rath talked about since learning of her illness. “She said, ‘remember this, write this down…’  She was going over all the lessons of painting, her lessons for life.”

Still things to accomplish

Recently about to begin chemotherapy to try and halt or slow the cancer marching across its landscape, Rath reflected on how life changes affect her painting.

“Life is always expanding, so as a painter your paintings are always expanding.  When my children were small, I left painting for a while,” she said.  She’s not about to leave it this time.

“We don’t know if I’m going to live. What (the cancer) did for my work, to me, is remarkable. If someone told you (that) you may have six months to live, you might say, ‘I’ve got to go to Italy, or to Greece.’  What it did for me was tell me that all of these things…I have to still teach my students to paint, (and) these things I need to accomplish.”

Rath is going only forward, not in denial of her cancer but choosing to push it out of her way as well as she can.

“I don’t know how to say it better," she said. "I just know how it feels. A lot of times I am sick, I am in great pain in my studio or teaching my classes. I am finding that if I just watch the paint and I am giving to these other people, the pain disappears or dissipates."