MJ Dobbins: Up to the challenge

MJ Dobbins’ favorite subject to paint is also the most difficult: faces.

“Faces are the most challenging, I think, to get the personality and skin tone,” she said.

Dobbins and her husband retired and moved to the Preserve from Seattle in 2014. Dobbins is a lifelong artist, but her husband’s career at GE Aviation required them to frequently move around the world. Some of her artistic mediums, including stained glass, were hard to transport as they relocated.

Moving to the Preserve, Dobbins said, marked the first time she could set up a permanent studio in their home. It also led to her introduction to oil painting about three years ago.

Dobbins had a background in drawing and charcoal, but “had not painted for years and years and years” when she started taking a drawing class. That led to trying acrylics and watercolor, but they weren’t the right fit.

“It was just too tedious,” she said of watercolor painting. “I love it, I think it’s one of the most beautiful mediums there is, but I’m just not the temperament.”

But in oil paints, everything clicked.

“I like the intensity of the color,” she said. “I like that just because you put down a stroke doesn’t mean it’s there permanently. You can move it a little bit.”

Many of Dobbins’ oil painting subjects are animals, buildings and plants, including a particular love for pumpkins. However, she particularly enjoys painting portraits, including family and friends.

“Sometimes something spontaneous will come to me, and I have to paint that,” Dobbins said.

Dobbins paints almost every day, usually for several hours at a time. She said she sometimes has to set difficult projects aside for a week or so to find what small detail about the lighting or a person’s expression isn’t quite right.

“You can really lose yourself up here,” she said. “Unless I’m really frustrated — and that happens — I’m just really in a zone.”

Dobbins is a member of the Mountain Brook Art Association and was accepted into the Artists Incorporated group in January. Her work is on display at the Artists Incorporated Gallery in Vestavia Hills, 3365 Morgan Drive.