By Joan Janzen
joanjanzen@yahoo.com

Decades have passed since Fran and Dean Francis created Sagebrush Studios, located twelve miles east of Empress, Alberta, near the southern Alberta border. Their twenty acres of land is situated close to the ravines and river valleys that Dean has been painting for 43 years. Each year he creates close to 80 prairie landscapes, which are displayed at Sagebrush Studios.

“We usually have new paintings up and older ones that are favourites because we have a lot of space,” Dean said. They have 100 paintings on display, which is more than Dean can paint in a year. “A lot of the paintings will be from last year because we had small crowds. Besides, people only seem to come every few years, so it’s new to them when they come.”

The paintings adorn the walls of historic church buildings - the Mantario Gallery and the Mendham Gallery, and there’s one working studio, the Pinkham Studio. Although the church buildings have moved to a different location, their original beauty has been preserved.

The galleries include an assortment of greeting cards and birding books, and Bill Wardill’s books, which are all for sale. Last year Fran and Dean added handcrafted furniture from Aaron Steinley of Empress. It takes Aaron about 100 hours to make a larger piece of his willow furniture, but you can be assured it will be able to be passed on to one’s grandchildren.

Aaron takes a weekly trip to the South Saskatchewan and Red Deer rivers, where he finds the sandbar variety of willow used to bind the larger diamond variety of willow that grows in clumps. He then strips the dead diamond willow of its bark and polishes and stains it.

Outside, the church galleries are surrounded by walkways and water features, and there are acres of prairie gardens to explore. “We have over 50 species and 10,000 trees planted. Planting trees offers new places for native species of birds to nest. It expands the population,” Dean said. “There are tons of birds, and we get a lot of bird watchers going on road trips.”

Fran and Dean do all the yard work themselves. “We have a lot of projects on the go. We’ll be busy whether there are people here or not,” Dean said. But they love to have people come and visit. “Last year, most of our visitors were from Calgary, Edmonton, Regina and Saskatoon, rather than locals.”

Fran and Dean will be taking appointments this year with everyone staggered. “Generally, when we used to have the open house, we had between 1000 to 1200 visitors. Now it’s less than half of that,” Dean noted.

When Fran and Dean aren’t doing maintenance, yard work, or entertaining guests, they are busy with their grandkids. “They’re quite young, so when they’re here, we don’t get much done. It’s fun, but your work just stops,” Dean said.

Nevertheless, this year Dean has another project on the go. He is painting a new mural on the Eatonia Rink, which he hopes to complete during June, weather permitting.