Volusia County Courthouse - Rainey Dimmitt

The Musicians, 2004
Oil

Rainey Dimmitt
Ormond Beach, Fla.
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Rainey Dimmitt was raised in Virginia Beach, where her father, a painter of seascapes and sailing vessels, supplemented his income with his art. Her mother, a Jewish immigrant from Romania, wrote poetry reflecting her family's daily life.

From the time she was a little girl, Dimmitt envisioned herself as a painter. She studied commercial art at Richmond Professional Institute in Virginia and, later in life, resumed her art education at the University of South Florida, where she received a bachelor of fine arts degree in 1978.

Some years ago Dimmitt worked in watercolor, rendering the world around her in colorful detail. After changing her medium to pastel in the 1990s, the work retained its vibrant color but gradually lost its meticulous detail. This was replaced by the rich texture of the pastel medium, which was used to suggest the atmosphere of a place or the mood of a human subject.

Her emotions, her nostalgic impulses, her sense of place and time are reflected in the faces and facades of her subjects. Reviewing a show of Dimmitt's paintings in 1995, one writer said it best: to look at Dimmitt's work is to "face the force of passion."