Diane Breuer: Creativity Across Continents

Discover how Diane Breuer’s international artistic journey shaped her unique style, her approach to fostering creative communities, and her advice for tapping into your own creativity—regardless of experience level. This episode offers inspiring insights into artistic growth, mediums, and the importance of collaboration.

In this episode:

• Diane shares her lifelong love of art, influenced by her family history and early childhood experiences across different cultures.
• The conversation explores how Indian and Brazilian art traditions have enriched her work, especially her use of color and space.
• Learn about Diane’s eclectic artistic training, and her preferred mediums like pastel and oil, including her process for creating portraits.
• The importance of community in art—through her Art Hub and local collaborations—is a central theme.
• Practical tips on overcoming creative blocks, starting new art projects, and the value of joining artist groups and classes.
• Diane discusses her inspiring journey living abroad and how it influenced her artistic perspective and techniques.
• Find out where to see her work online and how she encourages everyone to explore their creative potential—no matter their age or experience.

Transcript

Shannon Grissom (00:00)
Welcome to Made to Make. Here we talk about creativity, the challenges that come with it, and why we keep showing up anyway. Because hey, we are all Made to Make.

Welcome to the Made to Make podcast. I'm your host, Shannon Grissom. Today's guest is award-winning artist, Diane Breuer. Diane's creative journey spans continents and cultures. From India to California, her work and her passion, especially for fostering artistic community, continues to inspire. Welcome, Diane.

Diane Breuer (00:41)
Thank you, it's nice to be here.

Shannon Grissom (00:45)
It's just great to have you. You built a tremendous sense of ⁓ tremendous community through your work and your teaching. So do you remember a moment? Did you just come out of the womb creating? Do you remember when you decided you'd be an artist?

Diane Breuer (01:06)
adopted but then I found out that my biological mother was an artist and that my brothers and my sister are all artists. So that was cool and I finally met them and so I guess it just comes to me naturally but the first time I realized I wanted to be an artist was when we were living on Los Angeles when I was three or four years old and the little girl across the street Jeanie Lou

whose parents had been in a Japanese internment camp and were now living across the street from us, her mother was a Japanese artist and she did beautiful paintings. And Jeanie wanted to run around outside and play and I just wanted to watch her mother paint. Beautiful watercolor paintings. So that was my first...

first time I realized I wanted to do that and then my grandmother would draw with me. was tall enough to stand at the sofa and she would have drawing paper out and she would draw something and I would draw something too, like a little stick figure and stuff. I just started loving drawing.

Shannon Grissom (02:30)
I mean, just to have that environment, creative environment to be fostered like that, that's just so amazing from different places. Now I'm thinking about, you have, has the Japanese form of art influenced yours in any way?

Diane Breuer (02:50)
so much the Japanese but ⁓ I also when I saw when I moved to India ⁓ in 1970 and I saw the Indian art I loved that the classical Indian art and so I that's why I started taking classes and that

but not not so much Japanese art although I still appreciate it and I really like it.

Shannon Grissom (03:20)
I was thinking about your your sense of space and how well you use that so maybe there's some sort of unconscious So what now you've also lived in Brazil so how has all this continental travel influenced your work

Diane Breuer (03:28)
Maybe.

Well,

we moved to Brazil when I was five. My father went there. We were missionaries. And we went there and I always drew. I'd rather draw than pay attention in class. I'd sit in the back of the class and draw. a lot of the teachers would just send me to the back of the class. And I was in a regular Brazilian school from the time we got there. And then some of my parents said, know, why fight it?

And so they would get me teachers to help teach me. And Brazilian art has its own flavor. It's ⁓ very different from Indian art. So I don't know how it influenced me. I just, enjoyed doing Brazilian art and the colors and stuff.

I don't know, did that answer your question?

Shannon Grissom (04:39)
It does. I was thinking about Indian art is brilliant use of color. Same thing with Brazilian art, just in a different way. Yes. And your color is so sophisticated. It doesn't matter what you're painting. ⁓ thank you. But I was thinking about that. you do have a you know, I really admire your art in general. But and your use of color is it really is sophisticated.

So what was your training like as an artist?

Diane Breuer (05:13)
Well, started taking ⁓ private lessons ⁓ starting in Brazil from different artists. ⁓ then even in, ⁓ we would move back to United States in between countries. So I even studied art in Gillette, Wyoming, and then to India. What was my training? ⁓ I think, ⁓

My training was private until I graduated high school and then I went to the University of Art in Madras and then Calcutta and then studying at Chola Mandel and took classes at Fresno State. But that was my training and mostly I drawing. I love drawing.

And color for me was not that easy. I get my blues and my greens mixed up. But yeah, I had a lot of good private teachers, not for a long span of time each time because we moved so often. So a little bit here and a little bit there. So I guess I got a very eclectic ⁓ group of teachers.

Shannon Grissom (06:44)
Well, it sure paid off. You do beautiful work. So you work in a lot of different mediums. I think pastel seems to be your favorite, but I may be wrong. But anyway, how do you decide what medium you're going to do for each piece?

Diane Breuer (07:01)
Well, first of all, I hadn't picked up pastel until 1987.

And the reason I did that is because my kids would get into my oil paints. And so I went to a medium that was a lot easier to clean up. But when I decide, it depends what somebody wants. A lot of times it depends on the commission. If they're doing a commission, there's a lot of pen and ink. I did a lot of pen and ink work for the covers of magazine stuff. ⁓

brochures and even some of the ⁓ book cover. I did a couple of book covers. I just recently illustrated ⁓ part of a book and that was all pen and ink. But that's the person asking me, the customer asking me to do it in that medium. And then some people prefer oil and some people prefer pastel.

So it's usually what somebody asks. I enjoy oil. That's what I started painting in when I started painting. But pastel is so pure and such a beautiful medium. There's so much pigment in it. And there's so many colors to choose from. when you're doing oil,

you're mixing your colors and you have to be pretty precise and if you're doing a big painting you have to mix up a lot of color depending on sometimes I do a four by six foot painting and I have to make sure I've got enough color to cover the canvas and some people request an oil painting like down south in La Jolla I just finished a

a four by six foot painting and they wanted oil all done in black and white and ⁓ it's just their preference. prefer that. And other people say I want it done in pastel. Little tiny paintings with little tiny stuff done in pastel. It's a challenge.

Shannon Grissom (09:36)
Yeah, thank God for pastel pencils.

Diane Breuer (09:39)
Yes,

I have just about as many pastel pencils as I do pastel.

Shannon Grissom (09:47)
And I was thinking about the difference between pastels out of all of the mediums is direct. There's no, there's nothing between you and the pigment. You are actually holding the pigment and applying that. So there's, there's really direct nature of that medium.

Diane Breuer (10:06)
Yes, yeah. And people say, you can't mix it. I mix pastels all the time. ⁓ I just finished a portrait of a house, and it took me three different colors to get the correct plaster color on the house. So you can mix. And then I have all my pastel powders and stuff over here that I make my own pastels.

if I don't have the correct color.

Shannon Grissom (10:38)
Wow, that's awesome. So what do you use for a binder?

Diane Breuer (10:45)
water, a little bit of the binder and the pastel pigment and it's really pure. If you use too much binder it gets really hard. So the more binder you use the harder the pastel.

Shannon Grissom (10:59)
Didn't know that, I learned something today. Let's talk about pastels. you walk me through your, do you do, you know, your creative process on a piece? Do you start with a thumbnail? Do you...

Diane Breuer (11:02)
Yeah.

I really admire people who can do that I Usually have well, we'll take a portrait. I'll do it. ⁓ My example will be a portrait ⁓ I will have the reference photo and I might do a couple of sketches of the reference photo and

Shannon Grissom (11:22)
Me too.

Diane Breuer (11:43)
then sketch it up on the board or the paper. And it's always sanded. I always use sanded. Portraits I usually use about between a 600 and 800 grit paper. And I'll sketch it in and then I'll do a value study. once I have the lights and the darks exactly how I want them,

and a good. ⁓

a good drawing of it. It can't be just sloppy. Then I'll stain that in with, I'll have a little spray bottle and I'll spray it all over the pastel paper or board and that sets the drawing in to the paper and it stains it. Then I can go over it and for portraits I do it all in values of greens. Bright.

Lemon green medium green and a dark green So it looks like a Martian looks really kind of weird and when I'm showing progress of the ⁓ Picture to a customer. I'm always afraid to show them that step It looks really strange and then I go in with my warm colors and those

cold green colors, it just, you go in over it with the umbers and the pinks and the reds and it just brings the painting to life. Because we have a lot of green in our face and that comes through.

So, and that's almost always done in pastel pencil. And then when I'm completely done and happy with that, then I'll probably go in with soft pastel for the background, for the clothing, ⁓ maybe as a touch up ⁓ here or there, like in hair and stuff. ⁓ But that's my short version of my process.

Shannon Grissom (14:10)
So are you a, ⁓ do you create every day or are you a binge creator?

Diane Breuer (14:19)
There are some times when I take a painting and I turn it to the wall because I am so sick and tired of it. Then there are other times when I live on two and a half acres out here in the country and I will just close my studio doors and not go back in. Sometimes for a week I just have to get away from it and I go pull some weeds or

plant plants or try not to kill my trees or my plants. But then when I get on a roll, if I get on a roll, I don't want to be interrupted. I just paint. I can paint for hours. And there have been times when I get a knock on my studio door and there's my husband with a plate of sandwiches or chips or dip.

Shannon Grissom (15:01)
Yes.

Diane Breuer (15:15)
for something to keep me going. Or if he gets lonesome, he comes out, I tell him he's like a cat with a mouse, leaving it on my doorstep, trying to get my attention. But I can paint quite late into the early evening.

Shannon Grissom (15:31)
Ha!

I'm with you though, I don't like getting interrupted once I'm on a roll.

Diane Breuer (15:47)
Yeah.

Leave me alone. Yes. Yeah. Yes.

Shannon Grissom (15:54)
Sounds I was gonna ask what you do when you get stuck, but you've already answered that that's great. I mean Getting outside Do you have any advice for anybody? Who hasn't created in a long time how to get started?

Diane Breuer (16:10)
one of the things that I think is a really positive thing, ⁓ because you can watch a lot of videos on YouTube about art and watch a lot of ⁓ how-to classes and they're good. But the best thing is to find an organization or a group of other artists and get together and paint, whether it be just

at somebody's house or somebody's backyard or at a studio like I paint at the door gallery every Friday and then a few extra times during the month just to be around other artists and you exchange ideas, you give yourselves critiques and there's so much positive energy coming from something like that that it can really encourage you

And if you're stuck, it gives you ideas of how to get unstuck from sometimes you're looking at your painting and all you need is new eyes looking at it to say, yeah, you really screwed up here. Yeah, you're right. Or everybody's favorite thing to say to me is don't doodle it to death.

Shannon Grissom (17:31)
Thank

Diane Breuer (17:37)
Diane.

Shannon Grissom (17:42)
I had a teacher one time and she said, ooh, you're one of those that thinks if a little bit is good, a lot is better. And she would tell me to stop. Quit futzing with me.

Diane Breuer (17:52)
Yeah, because

it makes me happy I just keep painting

Shannon Grissom (18:01)
And now for a wee break. Is Made to Make podcast brightening your day like finding unexpected money in your coat pocket? Then help keep the episodes coming. Head on over to wearemadetomake.com. There you can share the show, contribute financially, or simply help spread the word. Every bit of support keeps these conversations going and your inspiration flowing. That's wearemadetomake.com.

Now let's get back to the show. So I'm wondering about back to your time abroad. What do you think about that time, things that you learned there that you couldn't have learned if you hadn't traveled?

Diane Breuer (18:47)
⁓ Well, ⁓

For Brazil I was very young, the classes I took there were just beginning. ⁓ And I probably could have learned the same thing in United States, ⁓ except there everything was so laid back and easy going and a joy to learn art. And the teachers were very kind and ⁓ let me experiment a lot.

In India, because I went to classical Indian art, I had to learn what gave it that look. a lot of almost like classical Indian art has its own look, its own colors. The eyes are always a certain way. The hands of motion is everything has

a meaning and a reason. Even the way you draw the figure, they're always on the inhale. So they always have this, they look like they're breathing in and they have this nice uplifting look. I could have only learned it there. Maybe I could have taken Indian classes in the United States, but being with other,

students there and learning in an Indian university, I think that was ⁓ a great opportunity for me to learn a totally different type of art. And even when I did batik ⁓ at the ⁓ artist colony in Chilamandal, I did, ⁓ and I did figures in batik.

It was always the same classical, uplifting, ⁓ breathing in look for the people. And that was fun. I enjoyed that. It was on the beach. Artists lived in huts and got to do boutique. I thought, man, I could do this. This is cool. I could live like this.

Shannon Grissom (21:17)
Well, you've always had a connection to community and people. Can you talk about your creation? mean, Art Hub in itself is an incredible creation. Can you talk about what you've done there?

Diane Breuer (21:33)
really wanted to open up a gallery for artists. Not just good artists, but ⁓ young artists that are just starting out and they just needed a place to get their confidence and to be able to show their work and to be around other artists. And ⁓ I know a lot of galleries only want to have

the very best that they know they have a chance of selling their artwork. And that's great. I think that's good. But I really wanted to give artists, up and coming artists, a chance to show their work, to be around other artists, to be there during Art Hop once a month, to ⁓ have other people come in and look at their work.

And so that was my main intent of opening the Art Hub. And then having the classes, kids classes all the way up through adult classes, the biggest challenge in my life was teaching children. Finding my patients. And it was like herding cats.

But they taught me a lot. They taught me patience. They taught me how to think outside my box and and that was fun and how brilliant some young artists are That they have gone on to study art, which was really cool Another thing that I did was I I hosted a lot of things ⁓ I hosted

Art organizations. hosted ⁓ art shows for organizations. would bring in ⁓ artists from the furthest away I brought one in was named Lyn Diefenbach from Australia. And I hosted the high school violin. ⁓ The kids would paint violins. And I hosted the high school violin paintings.

where I, Junior League of Fresno, I hosted them, Aquarius Aquarium, they want to open up an aquarium here in Fresno and I hosted it. So I just love to get all these people and their creativity together and ⁓ help show people what we have here in the Central Valley.

how much creativity there is. And you can't do it by sitting at home. You have to get out and do it.

Shannon Grissom (24:39)
That's true. So what advice would you give to somebody who thinks they're not creative, but they're itching to do something?

Diane Breuer (24:47)
if they want to be creative, get together with other people. ⁓ For example, I went to get a pizza after I was painting one day because I wasn't going to cook. I was too tired to go cook. So right next to the pizza place was this clay shop, a clay place like a studio.

And I went in there and it was so cool to see how many people were in there working in clay. And I love clay. I, so if somebody, just walk in to a place, just walk into a studio, just see what they're up to. A lot of studios have classes and just the clay place. thought, you know,

think I might come back here and play in clay with these people. Looks like fun. Just get out there and see what is available. ⁓ The Clovis Senior Center ⁓ has classes of all kinds of art. Go and check it out. And I'm sure every town, every city has a center.

where they offer classes and if you find classes you're going to find creativity. And then to ⁓ get creative you have to be creative. So just start by doing something. Even if it's like in gardening, go out and get some succulents and plant them and then make a drawing of them.

you have to start somewhere. And it's never too late.

And sometimes you think that your art or your creativity isn't good enough, it's good enough. As long as you're having fun, that's what counts.

Shannon Grissom (27:02)
Yeah, that's true. Wow. Well, you've been incredibly inspiring. Where can people find out more about you online?

Diane Breuer (27:12)
Well, I have a website, dianbrewer.com. So it's D-I-A-N-E-B-R-E-U-E-R dot com. And that's my website. You can find me on Facebook. I'm hanging around Facebook sometimes, not a lot. And posting my stuff there too. ⁓ But that's...

Basically where you find me. guess I'm on Instagram. I'm not on social media a lot because I am usually very busy. ⁓ either with my artwork or my grandkids or my family or my garden.

Shannon Grissom (28:04)
Well, that's great. I will put all those links in the show notes so that people can find you. Well, thank you, everybody. Thank you, Diane. You've totally been inspiring. Thank you. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in. Please be sure to like, subscribe and share so that I can bring more inspiring people to you. We'll see you next time. That's a wrap.

Diane Breuer (28:09)
Okay.