Hilltop Studio Painters

Patti Dempster
Purple Flax
Oil on wood 
80” x 36”

Patti Dempster lives in Sioux Falls, South Dakota with her husband Tom. They have 3 daughters, 3 sons-in laws and 8 grandchildren that help keep the creative side of her alive. She attended the University of South Dakota and graduated with a degree in Education. She has been a student of Sheila Agee for 3 years and would like to align herself with abstract painting but finds her work often to have variations in nature.

Artist’s Statement
My inspiration for this painting comes from the years my children were small and we used to play along the edges of the beautiful purple flax field behind our Lake Poinsett cabin. Those purple fields are no longer there except in the minds of my children and myself.

Laura Donohue
Clouds
Oil on wood
80” x 36”

Laura Donohue lives in Sioux Falls with her husband Dan.  She was born in Long Beach, California but has lived in Sioux Falls most of her life.  She attended Augustana University where she majored in Business and Art.  Laura paints in oil, has painted in acrylic, and recently has been experimenting in watercolor.  

Artist’s Statement
I look at the sky and clouds every day.   I am fascinated and inspired by the varying colors, shifting shapes and shadows of the clouds as they are pushed across the South Dakota prairie.  Some days the clouds appear as if they were placed in the sky for decoration.   The ever changing clouds and changes in light provide endless opportunities to paint my favorite subject - Skyscapes. 

Barbara Sparks
Bridal Veil Falls
Oil on wood 
80” x 36”

I began my career in art as a ceramist, and for 35 years, I belonged to the Colorado Potter’s Guild.   My pieces were largely utilitarian in nature, until I discovered the salt-firing hand-built process. 

In 2002, my husband and I purchased a sailboat and outfitted her for blue water sailing.  We sailed from Virginia to the British Virgin Islands, a trip of 1500 miles, straight down the Atlantic in 11 days.  We sailed four of those days in gale-force storms.  At one point, we were 1200 miles off shore.  You are never frightened in these circumstances, because you are too tired or too busy to worry about it.  Since then we have spent about five months a year in the Caribbean. 

Before we moved on to our boat, I started taking watercolor lessons in Denver Colorado, and have since joined the Colorado Watercolor Society.  I have now taught for ten years.  I have discovered that creating art is a wonderful thing to share - exciting, healing, and restful, all at the same time. 

Artist’s Statement
Water.  As a sailor, a watercolor artist, and an observing human being, I am drawn to water: the many colorful layers, character and movement of water.  It nourishes and kills.  Soothes and disturbs. We need it.  We are it.

But it doesn’t stop there.  The multitude of colors that water hurls at you, as it splashes over rocks in the sun, or washes up on a beach, or pools on a cloudy day, creates such a strong desire that I want to capture it on canvas. Impossible.  But not from lack of trying.