Artist is well above the average Grade

Rima Shah

Dory Grade’s first painting was on a barn wall in New Jersey at age

4.

At 73, Grade continues to paint -- no longer on barn walls -- but

in a wide variety of mediums including oil, watercolor, acrylic,

silk-screen, etching and lithographic paint-making.

She will demonstrate acrylic painting during the Burbank Art Assn.

meeting at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday.

“I believe she will be painting a seascape for us,” said Joan

Hutton, secretary and advisor for the Burbank Art Assn.

“She is an excellent and well-known artist.”

Nature has always been an inspiration for Grade, who has

extensively painted the Descanso Gardens in La Canada Flintridge and

the Yosemite National Park.

“It’s not just nature inspired, but it’s lifetime inspired,” Grade

said.

A mother of seven children and grandmother of 11, Grade has been

painting professionally for more than 40 years.

She has also been teaching equally long both privately and in the

Los Angeles adult schools, and has studied at Jepson Art Institute in

Los Angeles, Cal State Fullerton and UCLA.

Grade, who lives in Eagle Rock, has had several exhibits and has

completed her 30th exhibition at Descanso Gardens. Themes keep

repeating in her paintings, whether it be in the portrait of a mother

and child, the bright flowers on a sunlit part in Descanso, birds

soaring in a vast sky, a spring flowing and wild flowers in a garden,

the freshness after a storm or the waterfalls in Yosemite.

“I don’t paint for money,” Grade said.

“I paint because it makes me happy and because it makes other

people happy.”

The association invites guest artists every month and has invited

Grade before, Hutton said.