Veronica Kortz, a California native and impressionist, has spent her life painting across the U.S., to as far as France, Croatia, Egypt, and Indonesia, but her studio in La Habra Heights home is her favorite spot.

She teaches reading at Rio Hondo College and art for the North Orange County Community College District.

“Nature is my office. I have a good life. Everyday is fun for me because I love teaching and I love painting and I couldn’t ask for a better studio than my front porch,” said Kortz, as reported by the Whittier Daily News.

Kortz paints beautiful, sweeping landscapes, buildings, still lifes, and portraits and will be displaying some of her pieces in the group show, “Romantic Places and Scenes,” at Colonnade Art Gallery in Pasadena.

“There’s the romance of the light and the beauty. A lot of times when I’m painting, it’s nice for an artist to have something in mind and capture beauty and capture light and an element of mystery, in this case I can say some romance, romantic mystery,” explained Kortz.

The impressionist artist works in oils first and foremost, sketching out her thoughts onto the canvas. She also utilizes photographs, which she takes at “the beginning, middle and the end, because the light changes.”

As a plein art artist, Kortz is attracted to a scene by its specific lighting and composition. And the longer she looks at the setting she has chosen, the more vibrant the colors become and the more she sees for her piece.

For Kortz, it takes an average of three hours to create a painting, but then she adds the past 13 years she has been developing the work in her head. She considers many of her paintings still “works in progress.”

She has always felt that art and creativity are extremely pivotal to humanity and finds it a sad reality that arts have been pushed aside in recent years.

“Art is important to our heart and our soul. It brings beauty and peace and we need that,” confessed Kortz