CAÑON CITY, Sept. 4, 2003 - Ina Finch has always loved painting people to tell a story.

Since retiring from her art-teaching career, Ina has spent time doing just that.

This woman was painted by Cañon City artist Ina Finch on location in Valdai, Russia.

"I may spend a lot of time in Westcliffe standing on a bluff, painting," said Ina, 57. "But my true calling is to paint people."

Ina isn't restricting herself to local subjects. She has traveled throughout the world to express her passion for portraits.

One of her most memorable trips was to Valdai, Russia–Cañon City's sister city.

"I spent 10 weeks in 1994 walking up and down [streets] meeting people. One rainy day, I was trying to draw some goats amidst piercing wind," she recalled.

"I could tell I was making the goat herder very nervous so I moved over to a pile of wood where I sat to draw an old army truck loaded with cabbages that was parked near a little house. Suddenly I felt someone standing beside me. It was the goat woman."

The babuska (grandmother in Russian) asked to see what Ina was doing and then invited Ina to her house for tea. Inside the woman's tiny kitchen were small, government-issue chairs, a table, and a stove.

"She took out a large plate and set it in front of me. From a little pail on the stove she removed a huge fish, head and all, and put it on my plate. I could tell this was meant to be her lunch, so I explained that it was too much and beckoned for her to share it with me," Ina recalls.

John Smith's image appears twice in this family portrait by Ina Finch. He is painted at left, dancing with his wife Georgia, and at center, playing the guitar.

After splitting the fish, the two women enjoyed their fish soup, cottage cheese, and little sweet breads. The woman also offered Russian candies from a crystal bowl made at the Valdai glass factory.

"Finally, over tea I asked her, 'Tomorrow, may I paint you?'" Ina said.

The woman agreed and the next morning Ina painted two hours while the woman posed on a stool in her kitchen. She sat very still. Her only movement was to brush her cat aside as it tried to settle in her lap. "By painting my subject, plein-air, I am able to capture the essence of the moment. I remember a beautiful orange early-morning sunlight beaming in one window with a complimentary cool blue light emminating through the other window. It was fabulous," Ina said.

Through the years, Ina's paintings have become examples, not of detailed photographic realism, but of abstract impressions of people. She loves to paint movement in her portraits as well as Victorian-style stills.

Ballroom dancers are the focus of this figurative study of the body in motion.

She stretches her own canvases using Belgian linen, paints with fine oils, and adds museum-quality frames. Once the oils are dry (usually six months or so), she uses a removable, protective varnish. This allows the protectant to be easily removed if the painting ever needed repair.

Ina's love of art came from two important women in her life, her mother, Sylvia Johnson Finstrom, who received a four-year art scholarship to Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas, and Emma Ritzman, an art teacher who taught Ina the basic elements of good art.

"Mom had a gift and painted exquisite things. Her high school figure studies are beautiful," she said.

Sylvia studied for just one year with Birger Zandsen in 1935 before her mother, an immigrant from Sweden, insisted she return home for a more proper, lady-like pastime–getting married and raising a family. Sylvia complied with her mother's wishes and eventually married Bennie Carl Thorson, a Cripple Creek miner of Norwegian descent.

"The only thing they had when they married was a cow someone had given them, so they lived in Westcliffe and dairy-farmed for 15 years," Ina recalls.

Ina was born in Westcliffe. When she was 7, the family moved to Cañon City and operated a dairy farm in the Four Mile area.

Hannah Simpson of Cañon City is painted with a family doll.

Sylvia encouraged Ina to persue art because it was something they both loved.

Ina recalls the influence given to her by her art teacher, Emma Ritzman, at Cañon City High School. "I was very fortunate. I would not have pursued art without her encouragement. She really knew what she was talking about."

Emma told Ina that she had a gift for figures. She obtained a bachelor's degree in fine art education at the University of Colorado at Boulder. After graduation, she embarked on her art teaching career and taught all levels, from kindergarten to college as well as national Elderhostel classes for older students.

"The most fun teaching were at the elementary level."

Although Ina is a successful portrait artist, she said she never stops learning. She recently took a portrait painting workshop at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and some top level classes in faux finish work. The high-tech finishes, gold leaf to bas relief, will be used to create intricate backgrounds in her paintings.

"Mama would tell me, 'Make one line say a lot.' It's not the detail that counts, it's what you bring out and how you remove the unnecessary."