“I am as happy as a seagull with a French fry,” says artist Sue Dinenno, describing her outlook on life. “I wake up every morning singing, I feel such joy with life.”
A partner in the Artists Guild Gallery for the past 14 years, Dinenno keeps busy doing what she loves – painting. She also enjoys organizing and participating in art festivals.
“I wanted to go to art school when I was a kid, thinking I could get some real direction and focus,” Dinenno recalls. Her father, however, felt that a business degree would serve her better.
She went on to earn a Bachelor of Science from the University of La Verne (Calif.), and a master’s from the University of Southern California. Although she says “I was mad about that forever,” it turns out her father’s advice was correct.
Prior to moving to Vero Beach in 1999, Dinenno lived in California for 36 years, during which time she and her husband worked at Rockwell International; she was as a project engineer on the shuttle before it was shipped to Florida for assembly and launch. She retired in 1996.
Despite their lengthy stay there, she feels that a sense of community was lacking, noting, “I never knew my next-door neighbor.”
Her great-grandfather had been a pottery artist in Miami, so moving here felt almost like coming home.
“I have a picture of the fields full of his pots,” she recalls. “He would throw the pots and set them out in the sun to cure.”
The couple returned to California after the twin hurricanes of 2004 destroyed the beach in front of their home, but they missed Vero and moved back five years later.
Once here, she discovered that with her organizational and promotional skills, she could assist with a laundry list of art-centric events in Vero Beach.
Over the years, Dinenno has chaired or co-chaired the Vero Beach Art Club’s Art in the Park, Under the Oaks, Plein Air Painters of the Treasure Coast, and Artini at the Spring Hill Suites.
She also served as VBAC president, on the Vero Beach Museum of Art’s Board of Trustees, and as a member of the Vero Beach Recreation Commission.
Dinenno now sees herself as a facilitator connecting artists with projects.
“If someone is looking for an artist that does murals, they’ll call me, because I will know who to point them to. It’s great for artists and it’s great for people who need something,” she explains.
During COVID, wanting to have a reason to get out of her pajamas, Dinenno decided to convene small classes of students at the VBAC Gallery, explaining, “I wanted to have a place to go, and I knew other people out there did too, particularly people who lived alone. It was a really healing experience.”
Dinenno says that her medium of choice has changed over the years, including a mix of watercolors, acrylics and oils. Commenting that she has attention deficit disorder, she finds doing the same thing over and over again boring.
“So I don’t. I got into a health kick in 2020, and sold all of my oil paintings, because there are a lot of fumes and toxins, and solvents with oils,” said Dinenno.
At the time, she switched to watercolors, which have their own disadvantages in Florida. They fade if put in direct contact with sunlight, and Florida homes are full of large windows.
“And that’s a real problem. You actually don’t see much of it out there anymore.”
Then, when a friend died and his family returned the oil paintings that he had purchased from her, she thought to update them but didn’t have oils anymore.
“So I called a friend and asked if I could come over and paint with her oils. The minute I started painting in the oils again, I thought, ‘oh here we go again.’ And the next thing you know, I traded with Barry Shapiro — all of my acrylics for all of his oils, so I am back to oils,” she says, describing them as “so luscious.”
Likewise, although she paints seascapes, birds, animals, landscapes and flowers galore, Dinenno doesn’t confine herself to a particular genre.
“It is important to me to be open to all expressions of art. I paint realism, abstract and impressionistic. It’s an ADD thing; I just can’t be nailed down to one thing.”
Dinenno says that while she “started painting before I could walk,” and continued all through her schooling years, she put it aside during her career years.
“But once I quit work, I started painting the next day. When you have art inside you, it will find a way to get out.”
Within six months she was in her first show. Her art education has been an assemblage of top artist workshops, courses and museum visits throughout the U.S. and Western Europe. One workshop was given by acclaimed plein air artist Morgan Samuel Price, who at the time lived here. Dinenno considers Price to be one of the most famous artists to come out of Vero Beach.
Dinenno shared three favorite quotes from buyers of her art, and which are framed on her studio wall with the title ‘Remember Why You Paint.’
One quote was, “Hey Barb … We’re gonna need a new couch.” She explains that people very often look for paintings to match the furniture they already have. In this case, a man called to his wife that they would need a new couch to match the painting. The two other quotes are: “I want to touch the hand that painted that picture,” and “God Bless your Hands.”
It’s comments such as those that are valuable to her, “the joy of my customers when they come back and tell me how much they love their last purchase.”
Dinenno has won numerous awards and ribbons, and her work has been shown in galleries across the country. Locally, in addition to the Artists Guild Gallery, VBAC Gallery and the museum, her work has been displayed at the county courthouse through the Cultural Council’s Art in Public Places initiative, at the main and north county libraries, and at the Tides of Vero Beach and the Oar restaurants.
Dinenno is also part of the huge community of pickleball aficionados, but advises that whether it’s art, pickleball or something else, people should engage in whatever interest them.
“A lot of people retire, and they don’t have a place to go come Monday morning. If you have a love you can pursue, you can build yourself a whole new life, and that’s really what I’ve done.
You get a kazillion friends everywhere. It’s great,” says Dinenno.
“I feel so blessed to have come to this community. To be in love with art, to be in love with pickleball. You can’t smell the orange blossoms anymore because there aren’t any. But to finish our life off, this is the place. You give this place 20 years and you’ll have friends coming out of your ears. It’s amazing. I’m in love with life.”
Photos by Joshua Kodis
