Photo by Christian Schartner
Award-winning Artist Finds Inspiration from
San Diego’s Seaside
Catherine Dzialo-Haller, who lives in Carmel Valley and paints at her harborfront studio in downtown’s Little Italy, has no patience for artists who say things like “I’m not in the mood to paint” or “I’m not inspired right now.” Her motto is “Just work.” “Once you make yourself start painting, no matter how you feel, you find that all of a sudden…the day is over!” Dzialo-Haller says. You get into a rhythm, you lose yourself as you paint, and the time just flies away, she says.
Connecticut born and raised, the artist has now become known for her paintings that revolve around the ocean in San Diego County. Describing herself as a contemporary realist who paints abstractly, Dzialo-Haller says, “My painting journey is through abstract areas of color, shapes, and contrasts, and when completed and taken as a whole surprises me by becoming realistic.”
________Sunday Morning___________________________________________________________________Surf Meet at Cardiff_______________
Everyday subjects interest her the most. “I try to capture glimpses of daily experiences that tell a story and try to create a mood or feeling the viewer can experience and relate to,” she says.
Dzialo-Haller, who hails from Middletown, Connecticut, says her earliest memories of herself are always with a Crayola in hand – even then, she loved to draw. Her mentor was John Sweeney, her high school art teacher. “A true artist,” she says about Sweeney. “He inspired me to enter exhibitions that resulted in my winning two National Scholastic Art Awards by age 16.”
After moving to California, Dzialo-Haller attended the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles. After she met her husband Bill while living in Los Angeles, they moved to Hawaii, where she attended the Honolulu Art Academy and the University of Hawaii.
Dzialo-Haller, Bill, and eventually their now-grown son always lived in urban hotels because Bill worked in hotel management for a major chain. Living in suburbia, like the couple does now that Bill is retired, has been very different for Dzialo-Haller and has provided much fresh inspiration. The artist, who finally obtained her bachelor’s degree in fine art at the prestigious Academy of Art University in San Francisco, a city that the family lived in for a stint, has won many awards and is represented in galleries in Southern California and Connecticut.
________Surf Traffic_____________________________________Winter Surf_____________________________Stormy Queen_______________
The recession has decimated the number of galleries in business, so Dzialo-Haller sells most of her work these days at art festivals in such places as La Jolla, Beverly Hills, and Malibu, and via her website, www.dzialo-haller.com. Some of her customers are people who saw her work years ago and have found her again through her web presence.
The artist often paints in plein-art style – that is, on an easel actually in front of the scene she is painting. Or she works from a photograph she has taken of the scene…especially “when it’s cold, drizzly, and/or windy,” she says with a laugh. Her most recent work, in fact, is all about palm trees in the wind. “I really love to watch palms when it’s windy,” she says. “They’re so graceful, especially the Queen Palm. They dance in the wind. I wanted the viewer to feel the wind and the crispness in the air.”
Because of the importance of teacher John Sweeney to her career, Dzialo-Haller wants to give back to her community, as well. She does so through ArtReach, a special nonprofit organization that takes professional artists into elementary schools throughout San Diego County to provide standards-based visual-art workshops. The program is vitally important in these days of stringent budget-cutting in the school districts. “If I can touch just one kid…that’s all I ask,” she says. More information about the program: www.artreachsandiego.com.
Jacqueline Shannon is a San Diego-based journalist and author whose books include Raising a Star (St. Martin’s Press).
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