Shopper news • January 25, 2017 • Life-3
Ann Birdwell’s warm relationship with her students is obvious from this photo, taken as she greets Sherry Lane.
Ann Birdwell suggests improvements to Akiko Takayana, who works in the unforgiving medium of watercolor.
“She came to me in 2000,” says Birdwell. “She is very talented. And she’s a breast cancer survivor.” Ann McIntyre wears a smock that has “The Artful Codger,” a play on a Dickensian name, spelled out in fabric paint on the pocket. She lobbied for the class to adopt it as a group name, but failed. “Not everybody was crazy about the idea,” she says with a laugh. “I don’t think they liked the word ‘codgers.’” Birdwell is fond of all her students and says picking a standout is like “trying to choose a favorite child.” She has
two grown children of her own, two stepchildren and eight grandkids. Her son Robert, a caterer, paints every day and sends her a photo of each painting. “He was around it growing up,” she says, but he didn’t really delve into it until he lost his dad last March. Ann’s husband, Robert Birdwell, was one of the “Knoxville Seven,” a collective of envelope-pushing young artists in the 1940s-1960s. Birdwell loves her work and her students at the senior center. “It’s a real creative outlet,” she says. “This is a completely new way for them to express themselves.”
Pauletta Thomas works mostly in acrylics. “I so enjoy it,” she says. The retired critical care nurse draws parallels between painting and nursing. “You work hard ‘til you get it so that you feel good about what you have done.” Photos by Carol Z. Shane
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