Diane Monet

Diane Monet is an artist who has not forgotten art was once about beauty. “I”™m not cutting edge by any means,” she says. “For me, art is about joy and light. I try to capture beautiful subjects and places and have them uplift the hearts of people. I want to balance the headlines, to provide a brief vacation.”

Her art, she says, “offers an escape into the positive.” She paints what she sees “with my mind and with my heart” and says, “I never paint a cloudy day.” She calls herself a contemporary impressionist painter, a predisposition that came naturally: “I can”™t paint any other way.”

The life she had planned for herself in corporate marketing never stood a chance.

A typical Monet painting possesses “200 to 300 colors.” She first photographs a scene, then sketches it, then paints it. But she will not sign a work ”“ even one that is technically perfect ”“ until it touches her soul. She works six to seven days per week ”“ sweating the details to the point of using an eyeliner brush ”“ and completes about 35 paintings per year.

Monet is a spiritual and a religious person who says of her path from untrained artist to master: “I never had a lesson. God gave me this gift.” One patron of her work claimed a Monet landscape had helped heal a broken marriage.

It is heartening news that Monet”™s works sell ”“ for $5,000 to $20,000 ”“ and that the edgy artists who make you scratch your head are only part of the canvas in the early years of the 21st century.

Two forces infuse Monet”™s work: God and Gary Ray Johnson, her deceased husband.

“He was the love of my life,” she says of Johnson, pointing to a painting she did for him, purposely small so that she might hide it and surprise him with it as a Christmas gift. Pictures in her Mount Vernon home abound of the sturdy, handsome man who died unexpectedly at 49 of a massive heart attack. “He was the one who inspired me to paint and he remains my inspiration.”

As for God: Monet is a practicing Catholic whose works are meditations on beauty, primarily in spring and summer, which she sees as reflections of God. Architecture is often secondary to explosions of flowers, as in one of her many renderings of Giverny in the gardens planted by Claude Monet, a distant relative. “I can”™t paint any other way,” she says.

Monet sells her paintings mostly in Japan, although she shows both solo and in group shows in America and in France, as well. A career highlight was her 1992 inclusion in the Salon des Artistes IndÃ©pendants in Paris, an exhibition (and artists”™ society) dating to 1884 and counting in its talent pool Paul Cezanne, Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Camille Pissarro.

Monet paints almost exclusively French, Mexican, Bermudan and Italian landscapes (waterscapes in the case of Venice), though she also paints her own garden, bordered by a white picket fence. There are fortunate examples when she has broadened her horizons, as when she painted the 1740 Sherwood House in Yonkers for the Yonkers Historical Society, or when she painted a landscape for the front and back of a Boy Scout event booklet.

Monet graduated with honors from NYU with a degree in international marketing. Before she turned full time to art, she was a marketing executive with Pepsico, Bristol Meyers, Avon Products and ”“ she is fluent in Spanish ”“ with La Vanguardia newspaper in Barcelona, Spain. She has a lifelong interest in medicine and will soon resume volunteering on the cardiac and orthopedic floors of NYU Medical Center in Manhattan; she previously volunteered at the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital. Her mother was a nurse. She says of her hospital work, “I love it.”

The gate to Monet”™s home is appropriately propped open with a paint can. Monet laments the constant work of the picket fence, saying she may resort to plastic. Her parents bought the 1926 house she calls home and she shows a photo of herself as a young girl, her legs drawn up under her, presciently drawing upon the same living room rug that is there today. She owns two cats who patrol the house freely: Chiquita Isabella and Lili Grace, which makes unsurprising her side art business called Precious Pets through which she paints pets.

Monet is an animal lover whose works include the seriously whimsical “Cheetahs on Vacation.” She donates a portion of her animal portrait proceeds to the Yonkers Animal Shelter and to help cheetahs ”“ her favorite big cat ”“ at the DeWildt Preserve in South Africa. Her Web site is www.dianemonet.com.