The Suit Magazine

This was an important influence in her artistic development.  David McCullough, historical author, who wrote “Truman” and author/poet/ theologian Annie Dillard author of “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” also attended those classes. She was excited when she got a scholarship from Carnegie Tech, now Carnegie-Mellon University. “Andy Warhol [was] a couple of years ahead of me, as was Phillip Pearlstein. So many talented people in those post war classes!. It was a most 
exciting period of my life”. She nervously pauses.  “I was always Interested in the arts and got to see exhibits of world famous artists at the Carnegie Museum. I knew what I liked; when I got older I stayed in contact with a lot of my classmates from Carnegie Tech.”  But now her hands have gone beyond merely reflecting what others have done, her art is infused with her strong individuality. 

                At age 14, tragedy hit her family, hard when her mother died. “I was the oldest and I had to take care of my brother  and sister for awhile,” she said, “eventually the family broke up and I went to live my senior year, at my mother’s best friend’s home, someone who was really supportive of me,” she added, “I lived there and attended Carnegie Tech and studied at Indiana State Teacher’s College for a teachers degree.”  Biehl’s success has been made possible by that hard-work ethic and fortitude.

               After college at Indiana, she accepted a high school art teacher job in Pittsburgh, at one time the railroad capital of the world. “I taught in Pittsburgh, and there I met Ed in our church choir, he was an organist when he came out of the service, and we got married in his freshman year and he went on to earn his PhD.” Biehl said. “When he graduated we had three children and we had lived very cheaply.  I’ve always been an artist but when my kids grew up a little I went back to teaching for 17 years,” she added, “I wanted to teach, and go back again to my art.”

                As a professional artist she works in her Dallas studio, travels to gallery shows and also to their summer home in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado where she has a second studio and press for her printmaking. “I’m expressionistic in my work and paint and print what I feel about the subject matter with color. Color is most important to me. I have exhibited in Austin, TX at Flatbread Press, In Williamsburg, VA at Twentieth Century Gallery, at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg, PA, in Boston with the Boston Printmakers as well as in shows in France, Italy, Japan, Turkey, Hungary, and  Denmark.. Next spring I have been invited to show   at the American Jewish Museum in Pittsburgh, PA along with other students of Samuel Rosenberg, the most famous Western Pennsylvania artist/teacher of the last century.” “In Colorado, I got tired of the green and brown of the mountain scenery,” she chuckled, “I use more joyful colors in my work now. Presently I am showing at the Southern Nevada Museum of Fine Art.”

            Whether she’s toiling with pencil and paper, or wrangling with oils or acrylics on canvas, or any other medium, Biehl whispers, “Art is more than just paint, it’s the art of painting,”

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