Home Community Community News North Fork Profile: Meet Diane Alec Smith, a North Fork native who...

North Fork Profile:
Meet Diane Alec Smith, a North Fork native who draws inspiration from the natural beauty of her surroundings

Artist Diane Alec Smith at her Cutchogue studio. Katharine Schroeder photo

For artist Diane Alec Smith, an idyllic childhood spent exploring the outdoors and drawing what she observed has translated into a lifelong career painting many of the places on the North Fork she grew to love.

“I was born in Cutchogue and was raised here. As a child I got to go out and ride my pony through all the fields, go anywhere I wanted. I had free run. I’ve enjoyed being outdoors my whole life.”

Smith’s love of the outdoors — and particularly the water — is reflected in many of the over 1,300 paintings she’s completed since she sold her first commission at an art show in Cutchogue more than three decades ago. The walls of her Main Road, Cutchogue studio are filled with luminous paintings of Peconic Bay and Long Island Sound. Sprinkled among these are stunning paintings of boats, horses and seagulls.

The soft-spoken and gregarious Smith has always been artistic; as a child she loved to draw horses and cartoons. Her mother supplied her with paint-by-numbers kits to keep her occupied but she would quickly finish them and look for the next thing to paint. Her father allowed her to decorate some of the small buildings on their property and from there she moved on to painting with watercolors until her cousin, Greenport artist Rich Fiedler, suggested she try acrylics, which she’s used almost exclusively her entire career.

Although Smith has painted hundreds of subjects over the years, her favorite is the water.

“Always the water,” she says. “We spent a lot of time boating when I was growing up, so I’d paint all types of water scenes. The water is different when you’re on a boat. You are feeling the atmosphere, the tide, the wind, the currents. I can look at the water and know if it’s incoming tide, outgoing tide. I learned a lot by being out on a boat. How the light reflects on the water.”

Smith will revisit the same place over and over looking for the perfect combination of atmosphere and light. “See that painting over there?” she says, gesturing toward a scene of a Long Island Sound beach. “I’ve probably painted that same scene 60 times over the years trying to get it just right. I still haven’t captured it the way I want to. You see it in different light every time.”

Although Smith took several art classes in college and attended a few workshops, she is in large part self-taught. She is devoted to her craft, sometimes spending over 12 hours a day painting in her studio. When her three children were growing up she would paint late into the night.

“I just love to paint,” she says with a laugh.

Smith is also an instructor and has been teaching for over 35 years. She taught adult education art classes in the early 1990s, then gave lessons at her home. After her parents passed away, she and her family moved back to the house she grew up in and turned one of the outbuildings into her art studio.  The space is warm and welcoming with large windows overlooking a freshwater pond, fields and trees. There are comfortable seats and plenty of room for her students, some of whom have been with her for more than 20 years.

Smith believes that anyone can learn to paint and welcomes students of all levels into her classes. She enjoys helping people find out what they like and then helping them paint it.

“And I love teaching beginners,” she says. “They have no bad habits; it’s a clean slate.”

But what about people with no artistic talent?

No such thing, says Smith.

“Maybe they’ve been painting a portrait their whole life, doing a beautiful job on their makeup. Some people coordinate their outfits beautifully, they decorate their house – they’re artistic and creative. People who cook know how to use complimentary flavors and spices. So they’re creative in other ways. If they have that ability it overlaps. I teach them to look at light, look at color. It’s not about drawing here. It’s about color.”

Smith enjoys trying out new mediums and techniques; she frequently visits museums to see different artists’ work and then includes a little bit of what she sees into her own paintings. She occasionally goes back to some of her older works, “reinventing” them with what she’s learned.

Making a living as an artist hasn’t always been easy and sales for many artists have been down the past couple of years, according to Smith. But she remains positive and productive, selling some of her work at local shows and shops and others to repeat customers who will, as Smith says, “pop in to see what I have that’s new.” She has many loyal customers who own more than one of her paintings.

And does Smith ever get lonely spending all those hours alone in her studio?

“Never,” she says. “I’m in the painting, thinking of the lighting, the warmth, the sparkle of the water, the colors. I just really enjoy what I do.”

To see more of Diane’s work, visit her website.

SoutholdLOCAL photos by Katharine Schroeder

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Katharine is a writer and photographer who has lived on the North Fork for nearly 40 years, except for three-plus years in Hong Kong a decade ago, working for the actor Jackie Chan. She lives in Cutchogue. Email Katharine