Joellyn Duesberry’s landscape paintings provided a unique window into the natural world.
Her oil works highlighted places where few people might travel and points of view that some would never get the chance to experience. The pieces, splashed with lively swaths of color and a touch of the abstract, showcased the elephant graveyards of Kenya; a bird’s-eye view of 1999 New York City, as captured from the 91st floor of the north tower of the World Trade Center; and snapshots of serenity from the American West.
“The pictures have a vividness, a life in them that corresponds to what we’ve experienced,” said John Walsh, an art historian and curator who served as the director of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles for nearly two decades
That zeal extended into Duesberry’s personal life, which included numerous adventures and her husband of 30 years.
Joellyn Toler Duesberry, of Greenwood Village, died Aug.5 from pancreatic cancer. She was 72.
Duesberry’s love of art and natural beauty flourished at a very young age. When she was just 5, she became fascinated by the images that rushed by as she peered out the windows of a traveling train. She began to paint soon after.
She was self-taught, but found her way to Smith College and eventually to New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, where she received her master’s degree.
In her younger days in New York, Duesberry lived in the Bowery district of Manhattan and supplemented her passion for painting by working as a fine arts appraiser. When she sold her own work, the money would fund a trip to discover new landscapes and the creation of new art.
The Woodrow Wilson scholarship recipient also later received a National Endowment for the Arts grant that allowed her to work with Richard Diebenkorn and explore monotype print-making.
The plein air painter trekked across land in America, Europe and Africa, hauling her human-sized canvases to help capture what her eyes saw. Her work has been featured in major exhibitions in Manhattan, housed in museums and buildings across the U.S. and gazed upon by collectors across the globe.
“I watched her develop from an observant, careful landscape painter to one of the most beautiful, expressive, powerful landscape painters in the country,” said Walsh, who worked with Duesberry in New York and became a close friend.
In 1984, Duesberry met Dr. Ira Kowal, a cardiologist in metro Denver, while at a dinner party in Vail. They married in 1986 and as Duesberry settled in Greenwood Village, she added the American West to her vast palette, said Jessica Kowal, Duesberry’s stepdaughter.
“With each change in scenery, you can’t recreate the same thing,” said Kowal, 48, who now lives in Seattle. “She adjusted her palette to suit that scene.”
Duesberry helped to open Jessical Kowal’s eyes to what could exist beyond the suburbs.
It wasn’t a hobby for Duesberry. It was a calling.
By the time Duesberry met Kowal’s father, she had built a lengthy resume, traveled solo to paint overseas, created thousands of paintings to fill her portfolio.
She also battled and beat cancer four other times in her life.
“She was a wonderful role model as an independent person,” Kowal said. “She really tried to squeeze every ounce out of life that she could.”
The passion that fueled the vibrant paints in her pictures extended to her 30-year marriage to Dr. Kowal. The couple traveled to beautiful places — where he would fish and she would paint — and had scores of experiences together skiing, heli skiing and camping, his daughter said.
Duesberry stopped painting in spring of 2015 after she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Had the illness not stopped her, she would have continued with her art for years, Walsh said.
Walsh on Saturday night spoke on the phone from his Southern California home, where he stood in front of one of Duesberry’s works. The piece portrays the hilly countryside of a property Walsh owns in Marin County, Calif., but the point of view is from a spot to which he had never thought to venture.
The piece — the colors, the shadows and the shapes of the clouds — captures the striking radiance of the land, the little moments of bright sun, the chill of the air, he said.
In a sense, she was working against the grain in the art world, he said. Representational painting, generally landscapes, were left behind by abstract painting, he added..
But her work demonstrated incredible depth beyond simply observation, he said. She composed landscapes that sparked interest and elicited surprise.
“‘I don’t care what they think,’” she would tell Walsh. “‘I want them to take the trouble to look.’”
Duesberry is survived by her husband; her sister, Pat Washko; stepdaughters Rebekah Kowal and husband, David Bullwinkle, and Jessica Kowal and husband, Blaine Harden; and grandchildren Lucinda and Arno Harden, and Noah and Isaac Bullwinkle.
A memorial service will be scheduled for the future, her family says. Contributions in Duesberry’s name can be made to Compassion & Choices, P.O. Box 101810, Denver, CO 80250, compassionandchoices.org.