Kathy Dumesnil – Outdoor enthusiast

Kathy Dumesnil used to refer to herself as a “weekend painter.” Juggling work with raising a family, she didn’t have much time for her passion for art—only in those brief hours on the weekends when she wasn’t being pulled in every direction. “I still tried to keep art in my daily life,” she says.

Now 62, the Lafayette-based artist started painting seriously only a few years ago. It didn’t take long for her work to be taken seriously as well. Dumesnil’s soft Impressionist-style paintings of south Louisiana landscapes and flora can be seen in The Foyer on Perkins Road and in several galleries in Acadiana.

One of her paintings, “Louisiana Cane Field,” adorns the poster for this year’s Art Melt. She won the Forum 35 award at the 2013 event, which guaranteed inclusion on the current commemorative poster.

Dumesnil says the cane field scene wasn’t based on any particular place, but that she finished it in Arnaudville. “I was in this space and looked out the window and saw this great landscape. I used that as a way to finish the atmosphere of the piece,” she says.

The work’s hues and composition are reminiscent of another Lafayette-area painter, the late Elemore Morgan Jr., who she considers a mentor. Morgan was known for painting “en plein air,” or taking his paints and easel out to the rice fields. He taught Dumesnil and others at University of Louisiana-Lafayette for many years and continued teaching smaller groups of adults later in life. While Dumesnil says she’s used the en plein air technique herself a few times—kayaking around the bird sanctuary of Lake Martin and Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge—she also relies on her memories of the local landscape.

“I live in the city, so I do have to sometimes go out there and really get my eye set on these images and these places [for inspiration],” she says. “But it’s all really very familiar to me.” facebook.com/KathyDumesnilArtist