Diana Neville Knowles builds a career around the art of people

Spring is alive outside artist Diana Neville Knowles’ home in Ferndale.

The imposing Swan Mountains rise up in front of her log home, and a pond on the other side of the house teems with birds and the sounds of spring. It’s a natural wonder of beauty, all just outside her art studio. It’s a painting waiting to happen.

But Neville would never try to paint it.

She prefers the human form.

Neville is a portrait artist who has painted families, pets and celebrities including Sammy Davis Jr., Tom Jones and the Smothers Brothers, adding to a career total of over 20,000 portraits. But she never touches a landscape.

 “I can’t even pretend to paint it. I look at those mountains and I see no flaws,” she said. “I wouldn’t even try to paint it because I can’t match God’s work.”

Instead, she studies the human form, and in its human condition of life. Early in her career Neville Knowles, 76, worked at an advertising agency briefly before deciding that the “Mad Men” lifestyle was not for her. After a couple too many martini lunches she gave her two-week notice with the firm and set out to become a portrait artist.

This art medium requires a keen sense of intuition and people skills.

It’s important for her to be able to paint a person honestly, but bring out something in a painting that shows a deeper emotional element. “Otherwise you might as well paint a mannequin,” she said. The person may be radiant, pensive or thoughtful and it’s her job to bring that out “instead of trying to make them look pretty or young,” she said. “You don’t change who they are.”

It took Neville Knowles thousands of portraits and what she calls “almost made its” before she started to see the emotion inside the portrait of a human.

The true test of being able to paint objectively is to do a self-portrait. Neville Knowles has created 48 self-portraits, using a mirror. “Once you have an accurate self portrait you can do anything, because you learn how to be objective,” she said.

When she is commissioned to create a portrait Neville Knowles starts out with several photographs of a person or family. She’ll lay the photos on the floor and begin to remove them one by one until she has the photo that she feels captures a person’s inner light.

Sometimes she won’t have much to work with, if she didn’t shoot the photos herself. In those cases, she often passes on the work, if she can’t get a feel for who the person is.

Neville Knowles uses the oil technique employed by classic traditional artists. It takes her six months to create a portrait, less time if she’s doing a watercolor or pastel portrait.

Portrait artists occupy a small part of the art industry. It’s a métier that otherwise talented artists may pass up — mainly because they don’t like working with people and would prefer to paint landscapes.

“Portrait artists are not made. They’re born and cultivated,” Neville Knowles said. “The longer you stay with it, the better you get.”

She believes her medium can tell a wonderful story about a person. “A portrait can do much more than a photograph,” Neville Knowles said. The camera lens is limited by the lighting, while an artist can create a much deeper mood, she said. “The true portrait is best done by a portrait artist.”

She passes on this knowledge to artists wanting to create a portrait. This week she’s at the Bigfork Museum of Art and History, teaching students the basics of portraiture.

During the winter she works out of a second-story loft at her home in Ferndale. Portraits of family and celebrities line the walls. In summers, when the weather gets nice, she sets up on a porch next to Showthyme in downtown Bigfork. Most any day you can find her working on a portrait of a person and their pet, or a couple. She recently completed a black and white portrait of a local family’s son and daughter. The overwhelming positive response she received when the family saw the portrait keeps her working at her craft. “I have better energy now than I did in my 20s. I really enjoy getting eight hours of sleep at night … but I really like nine,” Neville Knowles said, flashing a radiant smile. “It’s a better energy. And my work is better for it.”

For information on Neville Knowles’ work or her classes, call 871-2770.