Kim's Corner
Page 3 of 6

More highlighting – Dick jokes, “ I'm not very good at staying inside the lines myself.”
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As the afternoon went along, and fans and collectors came by to have their gicleé or note card set or T-shirt, or poster signed, Dick spent time with each person, talking, posing for photos or discussing art, keeping both the conversation and the work in progress. I learned a bit about Dick - I found out that he met his wife while working for Disney; she was in the Tomorrowland office at the park, and that his son isn’t an artist - yet. "You get these groups, and they’re Disney people." And I learned a lot about his work - he uses acrylics, "Because they’re easy and they give me the feel I want.", and oil pastels, "So that I can use a heavy line, all the sketch work is with oil pastel." and that he finishes them with spray paint in up to eight colors, to add another layer to the work, "I also splatter it with spray paint… but (pointing to the merchandise around him) they told me I couldn’t do that in here." He laughed.

Spending time with him that afternoon, watching him cajole and instruct with the patience of my third-grade art teacher, I was drawn into the work and impressed by the artist. He took small hands in his own and guided larger hands with his finger - most holding a brush or oil pastel crayon for the first time - he taught and played with equal ease. When fears of messing-up got in his way of art, he would sooth nerves, saying, "You can not mess it up, I can fix it, I have more paint, lots more paint." He joked, "That’s the whole idea… I try not to stay inside the lines ‘all’ the time. It gives everybody a chance to enjoy it equally. They can say ‘Look, this guy doesn’t stay inside the lines I don’t have to either.’"

Adding a Mickey remark to his signature.
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Part art lesson, part life lesson. "Just a little tiny bit, right there, makes all the difference." He joked, "And you too can be a Disney artist." As he explained color juxtaposition and balance with another Disney artist who came in to watch, or discussing that "Saturday’s are Duck days." with a seven-year old, or explaining how to tell where the light source is to determine shadows and highlights with a teenager - Dick was able to answer just about any question put to him - just about. I asked him, "What is it about Disney? What is it that draws people to Disney?" He took a moment and answered, "I don’t know, honestly I don’t know… I can only tell you what drew me to Disney… I, obviously, grew-up with the Wonderful World of Disney and so when a chance came for me to maybe work there, at the Studio, I jumped on it. I wanted to be part of that… It’s kind of an intangible."

I like Dick’s work very much - even have a piece in my own collection - mostly, I think, because he takes a pretty straightforward iconic image - Mickey, or Minnie, or Jiminy, or Donald, or Winnie the Pooh, or Walt himself and then adds his own interpretation as an overlay to the core image - you can always tell the intent with his work, Mickey is always very Mickey-like. I also like his sort of comic-book inspired graphic arts intensive style very much. His style is dynamic and animated and his color palette is vibrant, but he stays very true to character - a purist with an attitude. I also like that he does his limited edition pieces as gicleé art on canvas (he uses a print company in Canoga Park CA). This lends the piece style, definition, and increases the collectability.

"It depends on what you’re doing." He explained his "loose" style, "I try to give them a little more personality… I purposefully don’t want it to look like it’s computerized. I want it to look like a hand-drawn image… a hand drawn piece… the process is always the same… to me, it’s not quite so studied and it lives." As the afternoon went along, and Donald was gaining more personality with every brush stroke, paint dab and oil pastel squiggle, be it from Dick or one of his many students - it didn’t matter if the help came from a five-year-old or a fifty-year-old - each person who passed through Disneyana or who added to the whole was made to feel special and came away with a memory of both Disneyland and Dick Duerrstein.