A lion head fountain trickles water into a pool near an outdoor patio area at the Druian home.

Central Oregon artist Janice Druian has to look no farther than her property near Terrebonne for creative inspiration.

It’s not a stretch to say the drive to her home and the 20 acres that surround it is breathtakingly beautiful, with the snow-capped Cascade Mountains looming in one direction, Smith Rock featuring prominently in another and down below the Deschutes River running through her property.

Terrebonne means “good earth” in French, so it’s no wonder Druian changed her artistic focus from classic figurative painting to plein air (in the open air) painting, where the landscape is prominent and usually includes lots of sky as well.

“I knew when we saw this property 22 years ago, that this was going to be the place,” said Druian, 63, who had just come down from her home art studio. “We wanted a place that when you wake up, it’s quiet.”

With her husband, Greg Druian, mowing the lawn outside, Janice pointed out that they’ve done most of the landscaping themselves, crediting her husband of 40 years for being a “can-do” man and implementing her ideas into a creative garden design that needs little or no watering.

Janice says their 1,700-square-foot single-story home is based on a 1960s butterfly design, which features two opposing roof surfaces sloping toward the middle.

“We had the house constructed by Chuck Newport, who also built Suttle Lake Lodge and the Art Center at Caldera,” said Druian, who also hired Newport’s woodworking brother, Jim Newport, to do custom cabinets and furniture in the home.

But, as Druian says, “this house is all about the view.”

And she’s not kidding. When entering the Druian home, the first thing you notice is the expansive view through the bank of windows on the opposite side of the entry. The sky, Smith Rock and the Deschutes River are the mainstays of this open living room, dining room and kitchen.

“Our house isn’t big — it was originally built as a weekend house — it’s nothing fancy,” Druian says of the two-bedroom, two-bath house. “But with the two of us, we really don’t need a bigger house.”

Though it may not be a big house, the house is big with art, as in a beautiful art collection from well-known local artists and some international artists as well.

“The nice thing about being an artist is that we often will buy or trade pieces with each other,” says Druian, happily. “I have so many artists’ works in my house, every damn space is taken over.”

Druian laughs and opens the door to her mudroom/laundry room, where more spectacular oil paintings are displayed. Paintings that most people would have in their living rooms, but Janice has run out of wall space there.

In fact, one of her hallways is lined with beautifully lit oil paintings, and if you didn’t know you were in a private home, it might look like an art museum.

“Every piece of art we own speaks to me; it has artistic integrity,” Druian says, looking at some of the art lining her kitchen walls, and pointing to a painting by Donald Yatomi. “That’s especially true of abstract art — abstraction is to identify, to define the dominant feature, which can be very complex, and you do it with one to five things, like shapes or colors.”

In her simple kitchen — with light green, honed granite counter tops and stainless steel appliances — all the paintings take center stage. Few of Druian’s own paintings hang in the house, and she explains modestly that she just enjoys others’ art, except in her own home studio.

Furniture and more

Druian opens the room to what she calls her “cowgirl study” office.

“When we told our friends in Portland we were moving here, for some reason they gave us all this cowgirl stuff,” says Janice laughing, and pointing to a saddle resting on a coffee table.

As you might expect from an artist, she doesn’t just go to the furniture store when she wants furniture; she designs many of her own pieces and has them custom made.

Such is the case with her rectangular dining room table with inlaid woods in various shapes and sizes. Across the room is a buffet she also designed and had Jim Newport make.

A horse statue also takes center stage against the backdrop of the Deschutes River below. Janice says she doesn’t know the artist, but she bought it in an art gallery in Paris.

“My husband said I could get this horse if I stopped asking to get a real horse,” says Druian.

Stepping into the master bedroom, Druian points to the bedroom set, which she also had Jim Newport build from reclaimed narra wood.

“This is reclaimed wood that came from a Philippine orphanage which existed at the time, under Japanese occupation. He was able to get this wood … from a lumber broker,” says Druian, pointing the beautiful, deep, rich colored wood.

In the master bathroom, Druian points to her deep Japanese soaking tub, which looks out over the expanse of her property. Another unique feature is the avant-garde bathroom cabinetry, also done by Jim Newport.

Outdoors

Just outside this bathroom is the lap pool, where Janice and her husband can take a break and swim laps against an automated current.

Beyond the pool is the outdoor entertaining area, where Greg Druian has a grill ready to barbecue a meal for guests, who can gather under the shade of a most welcoming wisteria and grape arbor.

A few feet from this arbor is a refreshing water fountain, also Druian’s design.

Just beyond this area is a bocce ball court. When asked if they were serious competitors, Druian put it this way: “We just came back from a bocce ball tournament in Napa where the only rule is, you have to be holding a glass of wine when you’re throwing the ball.”

Above the bocce ball court is Druian’s 625-square-foot art studio filled with her works, some finished and some still being worked on as Druian gets ready for a show at the Tumalo Art Co. in September.

After a bit of prompting, Druian modestly explains that some of her paintings were selected to be part of the Yosemite Renaissance Art Show, which is touring several national parks this summer. One of her paintings in that collection received an honorable mention award.

Though she might not be too serious on the bocce ball court, Druian is very serious when she’s working on her art, which she estimates takes about four hours a day, at least four days a week. While she considers herself “retired” from the work-a-day world, she has poured herself into plein air painting, something she longed to do, and now confesses to being very “productive.”

Windows all around her second-story art studio almost give the room the appearance of a watchtower, from which Druian can see the Central Oregon landscape all around her. From this angle, “retirement” never looked so good.