Photo courtesy of Dori DeCamillis.
Dori and Annabelle DeCamillis
Mother and daughter Dori, right, and Annabelle, left, DeCamillis will teach an upcoming Painting in the Park series held by the Homewood Arts Council.
Dori DeCamillis and her daughter Annabelle share both a love of art and a love of teaching it.
The co-owner of Red Dot Gallery, Dori’s strength lies in getting people started from the beginning and keeping them going at their own pace, while Annabelle, 19, is good at getting students to see things the painter has a hard time seeing.
“The main thing we try to get people to do is let go of perceptions of what things are supposed to look like versus what they can bring to the table as an individual,” Dori said. “It takes a lot of trust in your teacher to explore your own voice.”
The mother-daughter duo will be teaching a series of painting classes on Saturday mornings in April. Homewood Arts Council’s “Painting in the Park” series will rotate though different Homewood parks.
Dori and Annabelle will craft their versions of the paintings in advance and then will encourage participants to discover their own voice in their creations.
Participants can sign up for just one class or all four. Each one will feature a different painting, and people of all skill levels are invited to participate.
Phillip Forstall, owner of Forstall Gallery in the Palisades, is donating easels for the classes and is putting together an art kit for people who do not have their own supplies.
Dori teaches oil painting at Red Dot, but because these will be shorter classes, she plans to use acrylics, which dry faster.
This year Dori is celebrating the 10th anniversary of opening Red Dot Gallery with fellow artist Scott Bennett. The space is a working studio, teaching space and gallery to display the owners’ and students’ work.
A Colorado native, Dori moved to Birmingham in 1994 after discovering it in her travels around the country selling art at festivals and living in a motor home for three years. Most recently she has been working on Exhibit A: Paintings of Alabama Places, inspired by the historical and natural wonders in the state, and self-portraits of her own mind-states, which each depict an animal in a private mythology.
Annabelle, an art student at UAB, has art credit in her own right. Her mom said she has become a “local celebrity.”
She was awarded a gold medal at the 2012 Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, and her winning painting was chosen to be on exhibit at the U.S. Department of Education. She was also chosen as a YoungArts finalist and scholarship recipient, which sent her to Miami for a week to study with world-renowned artists and exhibit her paintings at the Miami Museum of Art.
Despite what some people think, Dori said it’s easier to teach someone art who has no training than someone with training who has preconceived ideas about what they are doing.
“People who come into a class with no experience are fine,” she said. “They just listen and learn. People call and tell me that they are bad and scared, and I tell them they are the perfect person to have because they have no bad habits to break. If you can write your own name, you can draw or paint. You just need a teacher to train your eye.”
Dori recommends not choosing which class to attend based on the subject matter of a particular week. The joy of art, she said, is not on the subject but in the learning process. With each painting, you will learn different aspects of basic design principals such as colors, shadows, blending and composition.
“Each painting is different, so you will learn something different in each,” she said.
Painting in the Park Series
Saturdays, 10-11:30 a.m.
April 5: Patriot Park Pavilion 1
April 12: Overton Park Pavilion
April 19: Central Park Pavilions 6 & 7
April 26: Patriot Park Pavilion 1
RSVP to homewoodalartscouncil@gmail.com, facebook.com/HomewoodArtsCouncil or 886-5978.
