By Marty Sabota

Lightning Bear Productions

Photographer Randy Rancier spent most of his life working at corporate jobs that he hated.

The father of three girls, he knew that having a steady income was the right thing to do.

But when his girls reached their teens, he began exploring his real passion in life: photography.

A fine arts major at Sam Houston State in his early years, he decided at age 50 to throw caution to the wind and pursue his lifelong goal of photography.

“It’s what I really want to do,” Rancier said simply.

The Corinth resident said his main influence of art was modernism, mainly from the turn of the century through the early 70s.

“A lot of the influence is abstract themes,” he said. “I think you can see it in a lot of my work. What I always focus on is that the image has to have impact. The impact may be beauty and form or it might be something strong and graphic. But is has to have impact.”

David Carles, owner of Café Du Luxe, a wine and coffee bistro in Denton that features art and music, is showcasing Rancier’s works throughout the month of February.

While some coffee cafés may feature a local artist from time to time or dedicate only a limited amount of space for the artist to display his or her talent, Café Du Luxe goes the extra mile. An entire wall of the café has been designated solely for the purpose of featuring some of the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area’s brightest and most exciting artists on a monthly basis.

Five others have had monthly showings, J. Lynn Kelly, Scott Focke, Joan Hart and Emily Penn and Keith Clementson.

Café Du Luxe offers private label coffees, some of the world’s finest wines and a menu featuring breakfast pastries, sandwiches, salads, soups, evening appetizers and decadent desserts.

Rancier said the road to Café Du Luxe was a long one. After graduating from college with a major in fine arts 1981, with a penchant for photography, he realized “I didn’t really know how to make a living as an artist.”

He enlisted in the Air Force, thinking that “flying planes would be fun,” but the would-be pilot failed to finish the flight program.

He worked in sales a few years before going back to school to pursue a degree in civil engineering.

Although Rancier still loved photography, he decided instead of using the right side of his brain, the creative and artistic side, to switch to the potentially more lucrative left side.

“Unlike many people, I am adept at using both sides,” Rancier said. “I’ve always had an artistic inclination, but I’ve always been real good at math and numbers.”

“I worked in the field of engineering for roughly 20 years, but I really wasn’t happy,” the artist said.

But he was married with a family to support, so he put his dreams of photography aside.

In later years, now divorced and his children older, he began to revisit the dream.

“A few years ago, I started back to photography,” he said, adding that the years off had left his skills a little rusty, especially now that photography had entered the digital age.

He began building his photography portfolio, with a goal of opening a gallery and frame shop. To hone his business skills, he took a part-time position at a frame shop in Flower Mound.

In addition to wanting to own a gallery, he planned on going to art festivals on the side to sell his works.

“I just saw while working at the frame shop for experience that if I opened a retail shop, I was going to get bogged down with the business,” Rancier said. “I just really wanted to do my photography. And the more I looked into festivals, the more I realized you can make a good living at it. It’s a whole industry.”

So rather than dabble in an occasional festival, he opted to make photography his only source of income.

“I realized about six months ago that if I’m going to do art festivals, at least to start, I’ve got to, for a period of time, totally immerse myself and devote myself to that,” the photographer said. “Because I realized if I didn’t, I wasn’t going to get a good start.”

He’s been accepted to show at four art festivals this spring, with a goal of 20 this year. They include the Arts in the Square festival in Frisco, Artscape at the Dallas Arboretum and Art in the Square in Southlake.

“It’s very competitive,” Rancier said of getting accepted for the lineup at art festivals, especially major national venues.

“This is my first major exhibit,” Rancier said of his showing at Café Du Luxe.

“They’ve got a really unique concept there,” he said, referring to the fact that an entire wall provides a wealth of space to showcase his works. “They have a nice exhibit area. I can put a good scope of work up there.”

He’s put up more than 20 images, some of them fairly large.

A popular one is the watch tower at Alcatraz. One of his favorites is called “Patio and Clouds,” a photograph he took from his back porch.

“You see the house and a shadow going across it at an angle,” the photographer said.

Café Du Luxe owner Carles is excited about giving Rancier a local venue to display his talent.

 “I think it’s great that artists welcome the chance to be showcased and realize that they can be a part of something unique,” Carles said.

In addition to having his shown all month long, Rancier will have the opportunity to meet his old and new fans at a “meet the artist” event there from 5-7 p.m. Feb. 21.

To view some of Rancier’s works, go to www.randyrancier.com.