Accomplished painter has long line of influences who encouraged her art

At 86, Dorothy Jaques may not be doing a whole lot of painting these days, but that doesn’t mean she has abandoned the local art scene.

Jaques was on hand at an open house last Friday to boost the ArtBeat gallery in downtown Vista.

And she’s sent her daughter, Dorleen “Lizzie” Lawrence, there to hone her own art skills. Mom still critiques her work, however.

Dorothy Jaques has been involved with just about every local art organization — the San Diego Museum of Art Artists Guild, the San Diego Visual Artists Guild, the Oceanside Museum of Art Artists Alliance, the Vista Art Foundation and the Carlsbad-Oceanside Artists League.

She has exhibited her work with most of those organizations as well as the Boehm Gallery at Palomar College and has had a one-woman show at the Rancho Buena Vista Adobe in Vista.

One of her paintings, an autumn scene, hangs in the home of Vista Mayor Judy Ritter, a neighbor.

Jaques has a giclee (superior print) copy of that watercolor hanging on the wall of her condo along with other works of her own, mostly multi-media, and those of her artist friends, the late Doris Tourangeau and Joy Peele, like her then, members of All Saints Episcopal Church in Vista.

“They got me into art to try to help me with my grief,” over the death of her son, Donald Horner, 24, at the hands of a drunken driver in Carlsbad in 1972. Jaques said.

Insisting she take an art class at Palomar College, her friends “opened up a whole new world for me — a blessing when I was going through that terrible grief,” she said.

A native of Fall River, Mass. (there’s still just a hint of New England in her speech), Jaques came to North County in 1955 when her first husband was stationed at Camp Pendleton. She and her second husband, Bruce Jaques, had been married 40 years before his death Sept. 1, 2011.

He was an optometrist when they met at Bible study at All Saints. (She now attends North Coast Church.)

Jaques said her husband also served on the board of the Palomar college district. She took classes there and at MiraCosta College.

She was a secretary at the MiraCosta Counseling Center, and she and her husband became close with the late John McDonald, president of the college, and his wife, Gloria, and the late Bill Foran, a college vice president, and his wife, Nancy.

“He was the love of my life,” Jaques said of her husband, adding he encouraged her art.

So did Edward Moores, art teacher at Vista High School. “He helped me so much through my art career, and he’s still a good friend,” she said.

“I had always loved art or had an interest in it,” Jaques said, “but it didn’t occur to me to paint or take classes or even to draw.” But then she found the first time her paintings were shown, “they all sold. It was amazing.”

At her 1995 exhibition at the Rancho Buena Vista Adobe, “that was kind of an overwhelming experience. Everything was selling off the walls that day. It was really wonderful.”

One of the highlights of Jaques’ career was being asked to put together a retrospective on Thelma Speed Houston, one of her early teachers and a nationally known artist. The person asking her was Ken Jenkins, the Hollywood actor who starred as Dr. Bob Kelso in the “Scrubs” television series.

Jenkins, a fan of Houston’s work, was visiting a Fallbrook art gallery and asked who might be able to accomplish such a retrospective. He was referred to Jaques.

“It was a huge job,” Jaques said, and it took months to plan, but it was a success and made money not only for the gallery but for the children at Casa de Amparo, the receiving center for abused and neglected children in Oceanside.