Naples Florida Weekly
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Preserving In PAINT

Naples architect Richard Diedrich exhibits watercolors of historic Bonita Springs



The Bonita Springs Williams Packard House by Richard Diedrich.

The buildings are old.

The paintings are new.

They’re architect Richard Diedrich’s way of preserving historic buildings in Southwest Florida, at least visually.

Watercolors of 18 historical Bonita Springs buildings are currently on exhibit at the Visual Arts Center’s Tranovich Gallery (26100 Old 41 Road, Bonita Springs) through March 30.

By creating these works, Mr. Diedrich is capturing history with watercolor and canvas.

The artwork includes homes, such as the Leitner House, the McSwain House and the Haldeman House; churches, such as Hope Lutheran Church and Lee Memorial First Methodist Church, and hotels such as the Liles Hotel, the Bonita Springs Hotel, and Shangri-La Springs, formerly the Heitman Hotel.

By painting historical buildings in the area, some of them over 100 years old, Mr. Diedrich hopes to not only preserve the buildings but draw people’s attention to them, to highlight their value and beauty.

It’s his first solo exhibition of his architectural watercolors.

 Richard Diedrich

 Richard Diedrich

“The thing I respect so much about Richard is his methodical attention to detail,” says Jack O’Brien, exhibitions director at Centers for the Arts Bonita Springs. “And that’s through the whole process, when he selects a piece of architecture to portray. He has criteria he uses: what is it contributing to the community and is it appropriate for its site. They’re beautiful works and he’s very much concerned about accuracy with the depiction of the structures.”

Mr. Diedrich, whose architectural firm was in Atlanta, (now taken over by his nephew), used to live in the historic Brookhaven neighborhood.

“I decided to commemorate the houses there,” he says. “Initially, I just did paintings of the doorways. The houses were modest. The doorways had all particular architectural detail and treatments.”

He began painting on canvas.

“I came across a pad of Fredrix’s canvas and it said ‘For any medium,’” he recalls. “So I decided I’d do watercolor. Canvas is very different to paint on than paper because the paint sits on top. The canvas is primed. It’s very different from painting on watercolor paper. You have to paint horizontally.”

Bonita Wonder Garden Pavilion (top) and Shangri-La Springs, both in Bonita Springs

Bonita Wonder Garden Pavilion (top) and Shangri-La Springs, both in Bonita Springs

He likes the fact that it’s an historic company.

“Fredrix,” he adds, “which produces art canvas, has been in business since the 19th century.”

He also likes the way the texture of the canvas is an added element to his images.

Mr. Diedrich originally learned to paint in watercolor when studying architecture at the University of Illinois, Ubrana Champaign.

“It was part of an art college, and we were taught painting,” he says. “The teacher was Louise Woodroffe, and she was very demanding of the architects, teaching us how to paint in watercolor. It’s tough.”

But he learned it well enough that he’d render his buildings in watercolor, and, decades later, create art in the medium and produce two books of that work.

(Top) Butterfly Home, Lake Park, Naples; (bottom) Casananas, Gulf Shore Boulevard North, Old Naples. COURTESY PHOTOS

(Top) Butterfly Home, Lake Park, Naples; (bottom) Casananas, Gulf Shore Boulevard North, Old Naples. COURTESY PHOTOS

And, he shares, in an interesting aside, “During the summer (Louise) would travel with Ringling to paint the circus!”

His book, “The Storied Houses of Historic Brookhaven,” featuring his paintings of more than 90 homes, was published in 2017.

Painting Naples

When Mr. Diedrich moved to Naples, he decided to do the same thing with the historic Naples architecture.

“I’m an architect,” he says. “Historic architecture contributes to the community, it makes a community distinctive. It really hurts to see the historic houses torn down, and they’re often replaced by out-of-scale McMansions. The big problem is, they’re out of scale. They take up as much space as they can use.”

For example, he says, the house next to Palm Cottage, home and museum of the Naples Historical Society, was up for sale. The society bought it for $4.2 million so an out-of-scale building couldn’t be constructed in its place that would dwarf the Palm Cottage, he explains. (Mr. Diedrich is a member of the Naples Historical Society.)

 

 

Mr. O’Brien, then curator at what was then called Naples Art, saw Mr. Diedrich’s book of Brookhaven paintings and asked if could do the same in Naples.

“The same thing was happening in Naples,” Mr. Diedrich says. “Houses were being bought just for the land and out-of-scale structures were being built on them. Jack saw the paintings I’d done and he wanted to do an exhibition of Naples architecture.”

Naples, he explains, doesn’t have a culture of architecture like Sarasota does, with its Sarasota School of Architecture of Mid-Century Modern, which was headed by Paul Rudolph.

“So one of the first things I did, I interviewed six of the best design-oriented architects in Naples, not only about their award-winning work, but what they thought was the best architecture in town. Not necessarily historic, but also contemporary. I got a great list that way! We thought it was a good program to point out the good architecture that was here, to encourage it.”

In March of 2020, lockdown hit, and Mr. Diedrich kept painting, producing approximately a painting a week.

“I’d developed this list of buildings to see, and it was perfect,” he says. “I could drive, I could do all this alone. I would take pictures. One of the things about painting architecture is, you want to get the best sunlight on the building.

“Is it best in the morning, or the evening? You have to judge how the building looks the best, before you photograph it.”

He’d drive by multiple times, to get the light just right.

“Photographers, when they take pictures, they can control the light,” he says. “With architecture photography, God controls the light. You have to go back, if the photographs don’t show the detail, or exactly how something works.”

He would take the photos from the street, explaining that as long as you’re on public property, you don’t need to get permission.

But one of the things good architecture does is integrate the building with the landscape. And that caused a problem.

“A lot of the houses’ architects referred me to were so effectively integrated with the landscape that there was nothing architectural to photograph,” he says. “It wasn’t totally hidden, it’s just that you couldn’t get the whole character of the building, you couldn’t photograph the building (properly) from the street.”

He kept painting through the pandemic, and at the end of two years had 100 paintings.

He recently published another book, “Painting Naples Architecture,” and dedicated it to Naples architect Andrea Clark Brown, who passed away in June 2022.

Clubhouse master

Mr. Diedrich specialized in designing clubhouses for golf courses.

The first one he designed was for Sailfish Point on Hutchinson Island, about 55 miles north of West Palm.

“It was in the early ’80s, and golf communities and amenitized communities began to be popular,” he says. Jack Nicklaus designed the golf course.

Then he did one on Hilton Head, in South Carolina.

The third clubhouse he designed was Grand Cypress, near Orlando. Mr. Nicklaus also designed that golf course.

“I developed a relationship with some of the golf course designers,” he says, naming Arnold Palmer, Tom Fazio and Mr. Nicklaus.

He worked on hundreds and built close to 100 clubhouses in 14 countries.

For 16 years, he also taught a course at Harvard during the summer in how to design clubhouses. That led to three books. The first was on recreational facilities and how to design them.

For this work, he was recognized by the American Institute of Architects in 1990 and named a Fellow, the highest honor the AIA bestows. He is only one of two Fellows living in Southwest Florida. (The other is architect Joyce Owens in Fort Myers.)

“I was picked as a fellow for raising the elevation of the architecture of clubhouses,” he says. “I took the clubhouse building type as the center of the community and took it to another level, with teaching, with practice, and with the books.”

Mr. Diedrich’s lush coffee-table book, “The 19th Hole: Architecture of the Golf Clubhouse,” which came out in 2008, has an introduction by Mr. Nicklaus. It can be found on the Internet for $500.

Locally, he’s designed buildings in planned communities, including Grey Oaks, Mediterra and Collier’s Reserve in Naples.

He also designed stores for Neiman Marcus in Coral Gables, Orlando and Palm Beach on Worth, and for Bloomingdales in Boca and Palm Beach Gardens.

Historic Brookhaven, where Mr. Dietrich lived for 40 years, was the first community in its area built around a golf course.

Does he golf?

“Not really,” he says. “I’m not an avid golfer. I do play some.”

Right now he’s focusing on painting.

In addition to his architectural watercolors, he also paints abstracts.

“They show man’s propensity to settle where the water meets the land,” he says. “It’s on the water’s edge.”

But he wants his architectural paintings to draw attention to the area’s historic buildings, their beauty and their importance.

If people look at his paintings, they may take some time and look at the actual buildings next time, rather than just walking or driving past them without notice. They’ll realize their value and understand why they need to be preserved.

“I try to call people’s attention to them,” Mr. Diedrich says.

“That’s what art does, make people look at things differently.” ¦


In the KNOW

Richard Diedrich: Architect & Artist
» When: through March 30
» Where: Tranovich Gallery at the Visual Arts Center, 26100 Old 41 Road, Bonita Springs
» Cost: free
» Information: 239-495-8989 or www.artcenterbonita.org

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