It appears Deane painted less and less in these two decades. In the early eighties he was working on a few themes. His style kept changing. Sometimes the paintings have more green, then more deep blues, sometimes a collage. It could be that the number of paintings decreased because his business workload increased. Or maybe his models kept growing up and moving out of the house!
A photograph is included in the set below to demonstrate Deane’s subjects often came from photographs. A color image of the horse is not available.
The caricature of a baby queen in the set above was illustrated for Maeve Isabelle Smith, Kay’s daughter. Maeve was the legendary and celebrated warrior queen of Connaught, Ireland. Isabella II was Queen of Spain.
In May 2000 Kay had gone home to Tulsa. She showed Deane photographs of Bev’s place at Horseshoe Bend and within a few days Deane had the watercolor finished, ready for Bev.
I think they were impressed it was finished so quickly.
This was Deane’s last watercolor. He passed away the next month.
The images below were painted as covers or pages for an unknown author’s book. I have doubts the book was ever published. This may have inspired Deane to make his own book (below). The photograph images that follow are Gregory J. Kopta who was an actor for TACT (see Food & Entertainment, TACT section). The paintings are dated after 1977 judging by the poster and TACT art in Deane’s studio.
Deane created a story with text and pictures in the mid-80s. There are twelve paintings that tell snippets of the story. The family does not remember what he titled the story and only one daughter remembers seeing the book of which no copy or text has been located. The paintings got moved around after the fire. Sketches are included in this set until the rest of the paintings can be located. A reimagined version of the text by middle daughter Jill is up on a December 2020 blog.
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