The Pet Portraitist

At my age, was it too late to find a new direction in life?

-  SUZI BEVAN

I took one look around the classroom and thought, I don’t belong here. 

I was a new student at what I thought was a beginners’ art class at the community center. None of the other students looked like beginners. They walked into the room pulling carts loaded with buckets, brushes, easels and other painting equipment. They greeted one another like they’d been painting together for a long time.

It had been decades since my last painting lesson. For most of my 69 years, I’d loved art more than I’d been able to make it. I’d married during college, raised three girls and kept our home running until my husband retired. Not much time left for painting.

A friend suggested I try this class after I confessed that I felt like it was now or never to become a painter. I’d postponed this passion for a long time. Maybe too long.

The teacher strode in. I couldn’t leave now. I’d have to find an appropriate moment to explain that I was in the wrong place and withdraw. I felt silly for feeling as if God had nudged me to take this class. Boy, was I wrong!

I’d wanted to paint ever since my kindergarten teacher showed our class a big easel and invited each student to take turns painting something.

My first painting was of a tree. In my mind, I pictured one of the trees at my grandparents’ house in Clifford, outside Scranton, Pennsylvania, where I grew up. My brothers and I spent summers in Clifford. I loved the fields and woods around my grandparents’ home. Sometimes my brothers and I would lie on a hillside and watch clouds drift past. I was amazed that I never saw the same cloud twice.