Abstract painter Shari Dallas of Pendleton taught art for years but didn’t start painting professionally until her early 50s.

Nine years ago, Shari Dallas intrepidly stepped into the world of the professional artist.

Before that, she taught art in Pendleton schools and at the Pendleton Center for the Arts, but she realized she needed to more fully test her own wings as a studio artist.

“It’s something I need to do. It’s visceral for me,” Dallas said. “When I’m teaching, I talk about drawing to see the world around you but also seeing what is within you.”

These days, Dallas spends many hours in her studio, an old farm shop transformed by her late husband Dave into a paint-spattered oasis. She steps out of her farmhouse, walks across the driveway to the shop and gets lost in the world of abstract expressionism. The easel faces north to capture the soft light she loves. As she paints, everything from piano concertos and James Taylor to Pink Martini and Sting plays softly in the background. She gets lost in the art. Dallas admits that if she lived on a desert island, she’d be happy as long as she had a sketch pad, a mechanical pencil and a recording of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2.

The painter said she is inspired by nature. It appears in the patterns, colors and textures of her oil paintings. She admits to staring in wonder at the landscape sometimes to the detriment of her driving.

“I’m always gawking,” Dallas said.

She has no preconceived ideas of what a particular painting will look like. She interacts with the paint and the canvas and the experiences with nature and what emerges is what emerges.

“For me it’s stepping up to it and being true to me,” she said. “What comes out of me is everything I’ve appreciated about the world. I grew up here, so I’m really into the basalt and I love places like Wallula Gap and the rocks up the Umatilla and the Walla Walla.”

Not everything works and Dallas occasionally sets pieces aflame in her burn barrel. But when it’s working, she feels connected and like she’s found her bliss.

“You don’t want to come up for air,” she said.