Linda Doebbert's soft paintings of cabins hang in many Detroit Lakes homes. Those commissions might have constituted her career. But Doebbert loved experimenting, pushing her art from the realistic into the surreal.
In addition to watercolor and pastel painting, she did ink drawing, printmaking, photomontage, collage work and calligraphy. She made books and paper dolls.
"I think she tried and taught just about every phase of art that you could imagine," said Joann Knapp, a friend and fellow artist.
When asked in 2009 what she enjoyed most, Doebbert said, "I go through cycles, phases. Right now it's haiku."
Doebbert died April 9 at a Detroit Lakes hospital of a heart attack, after a long illness that left her bedridden. She was 74.
As a child growing up in Detroit Lakes, Doebbert would await trips from her aunts, who worked in advertising in the Twin Cities and would bring her end cuts of paper.
"I have been working with paper all of my life," Doebbert told the Detroit Lakes Tribune in 2009. "I'm incredibly in love with paper."
She studied music education and studio arts at St. Cloud State University, where she met Jerry Doebbert. He first spotted her one summer as she was walking down the street, he said last week.
"She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen," he said. "I didn't have the nerve to throw a line at her."
But that fall, he asked her out. A year later, in 1963, they married. Linda took a job teaching in Sauk Centre, then in Stephen, Minn.
After moving to Detroit Lakes and having children, Linda stopped teaching to focus on the kids and her art. She was "so good with those kids," Jerry said, instilling in them a love for art and music; before and after school each day, they were expected to practice both piano and horns.
In 1979, Doebbert and a partner opened the Woodland Gallery, with a working studio. Later, she ran a small gallery in the upper level of Norby's Department Store in downtown Detroit Lakes. She showed her own art in both spots.
Her realistic work captured the bend in a tree branch, the curve of a petal, the strong haunch of a horse. Later, her colorful collages played with the funny and fantastic — a pink goldfish swimming beneath a model's eye. Fall was her busy time, when people commissioned paintings of their cabins as gifts.
"I couldn't tell you how many people's homes in that area have been either watercolored or pasteled or ink drawn by her," said her daughter, Darla Weiss, of Ham Lake.
Knapp, 82, and Doebbert began painting together in the early 1970s as part of a group of "painting pals" who would gather to work and trade stories. "She had a love affair with paper," Knapp said, "and that included what you could do with paper — drawing, ink work, watercolor."
Doebbert "was always, always collecting materials for her photo montage," Weiss said. "Everything had the potential to be a piece of artwork." That fit with her personal mantra, repeated often to her children and grandchildren: "Everything counts, everything matters."
She adored her three granddaughters and visited them on her trips to Minneapolis to see the Minnesota Orchestra. She often gave them "tools and toys to really inspire their creativity," such as crayons, paint and paper dolls, Weiss said.
Doebbert was preceded in death by her son, William, who died shortly after his birth. Besides her husband and daughter, she is survived by her son, Doug, of Edina, and sister, Ellen Johanson, of Fargo. Services have been held.
Jenna Ross • 612-673-7168
