FEATURED ARTIST: Elaine Svenonius Like many kids, I painted when I was young, even won an award from a local art center. I wanted to be an artist when I grew up. But parents and common sense intervened and I prepared for an academic life. I loved my career, doing research and teaching students. But fifty years later after retiring I thought now I can try for an artist’s life. It was difficult at first. I was helped by the teachers at Kline Academy. I took Plein Air classes and a whole new view of the world opened up. Painting outside teaches one to see nature in a way not seen by those just passing through., e.g. the colors in shadows. Though I was not very good, the process was so absorbing, the end product could be thrown away and it would still have been a good day. But then the Plein Air classes were stopped, a great disappointment – at least at first. By this time I realized that as an artist I needed to go beyond painting what I was seeing to painting what I wanted to see. In the works of great painters, like Van Gogh and Cezanne, there is always a value added to what is actually seen, something poetic. It was Hawthorne, maybe Emerson, who said a writer could make marble out of mud. It is interesting is that striving to do so becomes a form of self realization. While my grasp will never come close to my reach, simply being able to see the world and myself in a new light is reward enough. And the challenge is fun.