Diane Youngblood Freelance Artist
Freelance Artist
Freelance Artist
About the Artist
About the Artist
Marriage to Jack Youngblood
immediately followed graduation-just as Jack was beginning a career
with the Los Angeles Rams, moved her to southern California. During their 16 year marriage, Diane practiced interior design, opened a stationery business in South Coast Plaza with another teammate’s wife. During those years she returned continuously to art studies at California State University, Long Beach. “But when you are married to a professional athelete,” she says, “ if you ever want to see him and have any life together, your life has to become his.”
It wasn’t until her marriage ended and her life unraveled that Diane picked up her brushes and paints as a way to heal her spirit. “As painful as the end of that life was,”she says, “it forced me to make God the focus of my life again and use the talent that he blessed me with. So I began to paint! Still…Diane did not trust her artistic abilities and she returned to school, earning her Master’s Degree in Clinical Psychology from Pepperdine University, continuing on , working internship hours towards her certification as a Marriage and Family therapist. A commission to paint a series of rodeo scenes for a Ford Motor Company advertising campaign convinced Diane that she’d rather be a “starving artist” than a prosperous psychotherapist. She hasn’t looked back sincel. “Painting is my passion! I paint because I have to!”
Today that passion is realized through larger-than-life canvases which celebrate life with a riot of color—vibrant blues, powerful reds, intense yellows and rich purples. Youngblood’s highly personal approach brings her subjects to focus in ways that are realistic, but appear to reach beyond the edge of her oversized canvases. Her subjects range from exotic tropical beach locales, to still lifes rich with texture, pulsating fruit, quiet,strong roses and mysterious figures.” I love sunlight, the movement of that light across the surfaces and that contrast of light and dark magnifies the power of the color.
Diane’s world travels have taken her fromItaly and France to exotic Katmandu and tropical Bali, from America’s West to San Miguel de Allendale, Mexico, where she studied at the Art Institute. Her paintings reside in many private collections. She has participated in various art exhibitions, including the Southwest Art Festival, the La Quinta Art Festival, the Laguna Beach Art Festival and the Newport Beach Salute to the Arts Show. Diane teaches painting 2 days a week and paints in her studio in her home in Orange, California.
It wasn’t until her marriage ended and her life unraveled that Diane picked up her brushes and paints as a way to heal her spirit. “As painful as the end of that life was,”she says, “it forced me to make God the focus of my life again and use the talent that he blessed me with. So I began to paint! Still…Diane did not trust her artistic abilities and she returned to school, earning her Master’s Degree in Clinical Psychology from Pepperdine University, continuing on , working internship hours towards her certification as a Marriage and Family therapist. A commission to paint a series of rodeo scenes for a Ford Motor Company advertising campaign convinced Diane that she’d rather be a “starving artist” than a prosperous psychotherapist. She hasn’t looked back sincel. “Painting is my passion! I paint because I have to!”
Today that passion is realized through larger-than-life canvases which celebrate life with a riot of color—vibrant blues, powerful reds, intense yellows and rich purples. Youngblood’s highly personal approach brings her subjects to focus in ways that are realistic, but appear to reach beyond the edge of her oversized canvases. Her subjects range from exotic tropical beach locales, to still lifes rich with texture, pulsating fruit, quiet,strong roses and mysterious figures.” I love sunlight, the movement of that light across the surfaces and that contrast of light and dark magnifies the power of the color.
Diane’s world travels have taken her from
