Chaffee Featured Artist, Dale Bills

Dale Bills—Painter, Watercolorist

by Penelope Weiss

Dale Bills’ specialty is painting moody Vermont forests of richly colored birch trees, created primarily by using spontaneous splashes and splatters of watercolor paint in a free-spirited, impressionistic style. Her career as a professional artist began when she moved to Vermont from New York State in 1980. She established a small art studio in her home and joined the Chaffee Art Center in Rutland. She also began studying and painting with many of the local artists in the Rutland area. Her formal art training began when she took a class in biological illustration through the University of New Hampshire on the Isles of Shoals, just off the coast of Maine. She realized that art, natural science, and biology are intricately connected and that she loved them all! She went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in biology and natural science and a master’s degree in education from Castleton State College. She taught biology for a short time at Fair Haven Union High School and then started a career in environmental health, from which she recently retired.  Nowadays, you will find Dale either out hiking with her four legged companion, painting wherever the inspiration takes her, or teaching at the Chaffee Art Center.