NEWPORT BEACH : Artist Values Brush With Beach Life

When the Salute to the Arts opens today at Fashion Island, local artist Debra Huse will take a seat before an 8-by-10-foot sheet of wood and begin to paint.

Huse, 36, of Costa Mesa will be re-creating her impressionist painting of Lifeguard Station No. 32 in Newport Beach, which was chosen for the poster of the 10th annual Salute to the Arts festival. She has just one day to finish the large-scale piece.

“I will be painting feverishly,” she said. “It is really fun to work with people watching you (because) they are always surprised how quick it all comes together.”

Huse submitted the winning painting of a wooden lifeguard station surrounded by bronzed sunbathers to the Newport Beach Arts Commission last year. Since its selection for the poster of the arts festival, the painting has been duplicated onto T-shirts and posters promoting the event.

In addition to Huse’s painting exhibition, today’s festivities will also feature Mexican dancing, Scottish and Vietnamese music, demonstrations of origami --the art of folding paper--and exhibits from some of the county’s most prestigious art museums. In the evening there will be live entertainment.

Admission to the all-day event, sponsored by the Newport Beach Arts Commission, is free. It begins at 10:30 a.m.

Huse wants to donate the completed painting to the city of Newport Beach. In addition, she will also use the opportunity to encourage patrons to donate to art programs at local schools.

“I feel strongly about the need for art in the schools. . . . It is really important to begin teaching kids at a young age,” she said, adding that she completed her first canvas at age 10 and sold her first work for $25 while in college. “I can’t not paint. . . . Without someone to show me how to do it at a young age, I may never have become an artist.”

Huse moved to Orange County from Indiana about eight years ago and was immediately attracted to the beach life.

“I find it real intriguing to go to the beach,” she said. “It has got its own culture and life. I have done quite a few paintings there.”

Huse’s renditions of beach scenes are dominated by the brightest of colors and sharpest depictions of lighting.

She works almost every day in her garage, usually on three paintings at a time, while keeping company with Peep, a domesticated bird that flew into her life a year ago. She uses photos of scenic spots in Newport Beach and Corona del Mar as a reference.

Her work has been shown recently in an international pastel show ij San Francisco, the Gregory Gallery in Newport Beach and the Queen Mary in Long Beach.

Her art career has gone just well enough to “make a meager living” on the art commissions alone, Huse said. She pays the bills as a part-time illustrator for a Costa Mesa advertising agency.

Huse said she hopes to branch off into teaching art and maybe publish a book of her works.