"Mt. Jefferson & Fields" by Gil Dellinger

A week ago, the Old Mill District was bustling with shoppers and vehicles on a hot, smoky Friday afternoon. Inside Tumalo Art Co., the scenery called to mind cool, rushing rivers, lush alpine forests and snowy mountaintops.

The imagery comes from the mind and brush strokes of Gil Dellinger. The artist-run gallery’s newest member and featured artist for July, Dellinger creates his works using soft pastels, oils and acrylics. Along with trekking to paint on location, he also works in his studio.

“I’m a plein air painter most, in my heart, but I do use digitals,” said Dellinger, who serves as president of the Plein Air Painters of America, or PAPA. Dellinger has shown his works in nearly 400 group and solo exhibits since 1976.

In 2001, Dellinger stepped away from a 30-year art instruction career. Though he retired from the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, he did so to devote himself full-time to his own paintings of landscapes, seascapes and figurative work.

Adjusting to life after teaching wasn’t easy. “I love painting, but it was very hard at first. Very hard at first,” he said. “I was used to being the center of attention. Not that you necessarily strive to be the center of attention, but you are. And then I was alone a lot. That was very hard for me at first.”

Dellinger came to know Bend teaching for Art in the Mountains, which provides destination art instruction, in 2007. Aug. 4-8, he’ll lead an Art in the Mountains intermediate-to-advanced workshop on how to turn plein air sketches into finished work (for more information, visit www.artinthemountains.com).

Dellinger and his wife, Alexa, parents of four grown children, moved to Bend in September.

“We wanted to get out of California, and we were looking for a place, and of course we came up on a 72-degree day,” he said. Once they’d decided on Bend, it took them more than a year to sell their California residence. They bought a house on Awbrey Butte, from which Dellinger sets out exploring his new home’s picturesque surroundings.

His painting “Yosemite” graces one version of the 2013 art book “Art of the National Parks.”

“There are seven covers, one for each area where the book is being featured,” Dellinger said. Dellinger has painted landscapes in Canada, Mexico and around the West.

“I have in the past traveled (to paint) a lot, but (I’m) not doing that so much anymore — I’m traveling with my life, which is more fun,” he said. “I really love painting here.”

Already, he’s captured scenes of the Deschutes River, as in “From the Bridge on Archie Briggs Rd.,” in which a red-winged blackbird is seen swooping over rapids. He’s also painted Mount Jefferson with golden fields in the foreground, as well as the Metolius River. His rendering of an old red logging truck parked near Sisters has received many comments from gallery visitors who recognize it, he said.

“I came in with my pastels. I sat down and did that in about an hour, an hour and a half. It just kind of flowed,” Dellinger said of the painting. “If I see something, I’ll pull off the side of the road and I’ll just do it. I go out searching. This morning I was at Sawyer Park.”

Dellinger frequently mentioned his love for the act of painting.

“I look forward to it every day … unless it’s a painting that’s very, very hard, and then of course I do everything I can to avoid it,” he said.

Generally, “I get up very early and I’ll work till very late at night. I love it still,” he said. “I’m passionate, but I try to observe the Sabbath. But sometimes it’s very hard, and I don’t.”

Dellinger’s spirituality informs all his work, he said.

“I’m always trying to express the fact that beauty is a gift to us that helps us to understand that something bigger exists beyond us. Because, in beauty, there’s a sense of an otherworldly purpose.”

— Reporter: 541-383-0349, djasper@bendbulletin.com