About Art and Me

I am now an old person, retired from practicing and teaching nursing, widowed, and living alone, but give me a brush and some paint and I am young again, free as a bird. I will take you on a trip through my memories or on a walk through my back yard.

I love to experiment with new art materials and to learn to use new techniques. Watercolor is my favorite medium, but I also work in oil, acrylic and pastel. I paint realistically when I feel I just have to share what I see, and abstractly when I’m excited about a particular idea. Maybe that is part of being a self–taught artist. As a youngster, I was often left to entertain myself since I had no siblings and we often lived where there were no other children. Sketching became a favorite pastime encouraged by both parents.

I had no opportunity for art lessons in elementary or high school and never considered art as a major when I was in college. The sketching continued as illustrations in projects and observations in laboratory sciences. I started using colored ink in my drawings and even used tempura in some of the illustrations.

Several years later I was involved in establishing a Chapter of the American Association of University Women in Greenwood. I met an artist who changed my life.

Laliah Walker Lewis was one of the WPA artists who continued to paint and teach in her hometown. She taught Art History, the first continuing education course that AAUW organized in Greenwood. One day, she saw some of my drawings and offered to teach me to paint. I had been drawing in ink on the white cardboard that laundries used to package men’s shirts. I used toothpicks and tempura to add color. We purchased some artist grade supplies and she patiently taught me the basics of color mixing, shading, handling a brush, and making a picture.

I studied oil painting with Jean Abrams and acrylic painting with Evelyne Kiker at Mississippi Delta Community College in the early 1970s. I was director of the Associate Degree Nursing Program at the time and the night courses in art were just what I needed to relax after a stressful day of managing a fast growing program.

When I moved to Hattiesburg in 1977, the South Mississippi Art Association was well established as a community organization. After seeing a show at the Cloverleaf Mall, I joined the organization. It was wonderful to go to the Firehouse Gallery, the little building just off Main Street that was home for SMAA. We often had weekend workshops with artists who were members and with visiting artists. I remember taking a course in watercolor taught by Ruby Walker. She left me with a love for the medium that has persisted to this day.