ARTIST FINDS INSPIRATION IN EXPRESSIONS OF FAITH.

Byline: VICTORIA GIRAUD

Gaye Lynne La Guire calls herself an inspirational artist. And she doesn't have to leave her Westlake Village studio to find inspiration.

As Gaye tells her art students at Moorpark College, where she's taught for 25 years, ``Don't go searching for grand schemes; it's right in front of you.''

Creating in a wide range of mediums, Gaye is known for her emotional portraits, landscapes, watercolors and more recently, a series of portrayals of Jesus. She's currently working on completing a series depicting Jesus as the ``Good Shepherd'' of the Bible's Psalm 23.

Teaching has also always been a primary interest. Before she began at Moorpark College, Gaye was teaching at Canoga Park High School. ``Part of my goal in teaching is to help each student discover what kind of artist they really want to be,'' Gaye declared.

Observing that a whole generation of art teachers in the 1950s and '60s ``didn't know how to teach,'' Gaye insists her students are taught the basic fundamental drawing principles - ``volume, depth and proportion,'' for instance - as well as studying an overview of work from the Renaissance through modern day.

As a young woman, Gaye leaned toward abstract expression, which was popular at the time, especially in watercolor. (Her watercolor expertise earned her four awards from the California National Watercolor Society in the 1980s.) As she began to change her style and create figuratively, she at first felt like a traitor to her training.

``When Greg (her son) was born, I changed my goals. My son - his blue eyes and red hair - inspired my portrait career.'' Gaye's continual paintings of her son were part of his growing up years; she estimates that she's done 20 to 30 of them.

After researching other artists' work with children, Gaye ``realized the genre of art I really wanted to pursue was narrative realism, that wove through American illustration.'' She expanded her career when she bartered a watercolor portrait of her dentist's son for a root canal that she needed. The dentist liked the portrait so well, he hung it in his office. ``I got 10 jobs from it and it never stopped,'' Gaye enthused.

About 13 years ago, while praying in the shower, she asked God what she could do for Him. The answer came back immediately; paint the Good Shepherd. That turned into a three-year challenge, since ``normally you paint what you've seen.'' Gaye began by reading all of Jesus' quotes from the Bible. Deciding to have him holding a lamb, ``I went around to any sheep pens I could find.'' And she found a model for Jesus, a young man who was a missionary.

Once she had painted ``I am the Good Shepherd,'' which has been duplicated on lithographs and cards and sold all over the country, Gaye went on to paint many others. One of her most recent paintings that focuses on Jesus, called ``I Am'' after a quote from Revelations, was such an inspiration that she completed this ethereal-looking painting in three days.

Growing up in Detroit, Gaye was inspired by her creative family. Her father painted landscapes as a hobby. Her mother, who is now 87, is working on writing her fifth book. Gaye attended the University of Michigan, where she first pursued sculpture and later attended graduate school, majoring in painting.

Gaye married Joe Warren Cox, a fellow Michigan student, after college and the two moved to the Conejo Valley in the 1960s. Joe passed on in the early 1980s and Gaye faced the challenges of widowhood.

In the past couple of years, she also has had to fight cranial arteritis, an inflammation of the arteries that causes mini-strokes. The disease came on without her realizing it, as Gaye inexplicably gained weight and found she had cognitive difficulties.

``My brains and talent went away,'' Gaye explained. She is a fighter and with a ``good medical program, lots of good friends and lots of prayers,'' she has been able to put her creative career back on course. Her disease also has inspired son Greg to study biochemistry and discover how the brain processes drugs.

One of her future goals is to return to a full-time academic career. ``I want to find an academic environment to teach a lot of kids. If my health holds up, I want to teach until I'm 75,'' Gaye declares.

``Life is a mysterious and wonderful thing,'' Gaye says with enthusiasm. ``My painting is a celebration of God's miracle of beauty.''

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: Westlake Village artist Gaye Lynne La Guire poses with a painting from her ``Good Shepherd'' series.

Jeremy Greene/Special to the Daily News