STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Larissa DeHaas studied art throughout her life, pursuing both an art degree and an environmental science degree at Willamette University.

But it was after an accident in which she sustained a traumatic brain injury that art really came into focus for her.

DeHaas, the community recreation supervisor for the City of Ketchum, was driving along Highway 75 near Hulen Meadows in 2016 when a truck driver gunned his truck to vacate a dirt area. The truck t-boned DeHaas’ car.

Larissa Lolo DeHaas goes by “Lolo,” which is the name the kids she works with call her because it’s easier than Larissa. Here she shows off a bag she made for the 2025 World Cup Finals in Sun Valley.

The accident left her with a neurological disorder in which she saw visual snow like that on old TVs.

“I was 26, and they had to work with me to retrain my eyes to move correctly, to focus correctly,” she recounted. “I was sleeping 14 hours a day, I’d get panic attacks, and it was calming to sit there and sketch. It pulled me out of my despair while my brain was healing.”

Some people can’t hold fulltime jobs after an injury like DeHaas suffered. And, for her, it was frustrating to have to relearn how to ski the backcountry—something she’d done all her life while living in Boise and Ketchum.

But the visual snow, black dots and floaters that have become so much a part of her life have found their way onto her art, which involves pointillism that uses tiny dots that become blended in the viewer’s eye.

Larissa Lolo DeHaas’ pointillism gives her art a unique texture.

She’s showing that luminous work in all its brilliant colors this weekend at the Ketchum Arts Festival. The three-day festival featuring a hundred artists concludes today from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Sun Valley’s Champions’ Meadow on Sun Valley Road.

“I began painting the mountains when I couldn’t ski them following my injury. I built my own dot world on paper,” said DeHaas, who also exhibits her work at the ERC office on Leadville Avenue and at Saddletree Gallery and Framing at 360 N. East Ave. in Ketchum.

DeHaas works in acrylics, oils and ink using a wide variety of brushes that her grandmothers painted with. She applies the crowning touch to her paintings with a brush that resembles a pencil—a brush that’s used on mandala rock art.

The dots she applies with that pointed tool adds texture to her paintings, while forcing her to pay attention to the tiny details—a process she finds both meditative and calming.

“Sawtooth Dreams” shows the abstract nature of Larissa Lolo DeHaas’ paintings.

Pointillism founded on color theory, and DeHaas has canvas after canvas filled with dots in color studies. It comes in handy when she paints the Milky Way.

“I work in a flow state to let the color come through,” said DeHaas, who teaches art classes for the Ketchum youth she works with, in addition to driving the Zamboni on the Atkinsons Park ice rink. “My color studies are part meditation, party study and part abstract art. I did a lot of color studies when I couldn’t paint. I find solace in patience. Slowing down and focusing on the tiny details give me inner peace.”

DeHaas paints landscapes that she has hiked and skied, such as Bald Mountain, Mount Heyburn, the Sawtooth Mountains, the Grand Mogul, McGown Peak and the Pioneer Mountains. She also paints landscapes that she sees in her dreams.

They’re purposefully a little abstract, she says, to give viewers a feeling for an area. And some of her paintings, such as one of Old Hyndman, sport geometric qualities with columns, even shapes that look like whipped cream topping them off.

Larissa Lolo DeHaas has a variety of items on sale at the Ketchum Arts Festival, including gift cards, goggle covers, coasters and purses.

“The geometric shapes, the basalt columns, probably reflect all the geology I studied,” she said. “I grew up camping at Redfish Lake. And, once I started painting, it was the mountains that inspired me. I hope the mountains speak through me and give viewers more love and respect for Mother Nature.”