Never too late: Burnett gallery hosts an exhibit by members of the Senior Center Art Workshop

By Bonnie Wells
Staff Writer

Published on February 01, 2008

Five years ago, at the age of 75, Gokce Ergun dropped by the weekly art workshop at the Amherst Senior Center and asked the members if he might join them.

Absolutely, they said, the more the merrier. In the course of conversation, one of the members asked what style of painting he did. "I said I didn't have a style, because I never painted before," Ergun remembers.

"He had never worked in oil," said group member Evelyn Newton. "We had to tell him what [materials] to buy."

The public can check out Ergun's astonishing progress since then in an exhibit at Burnett Gallery in Amherst. Ergun and four group members will share the February show, which opens with a reception Saturday, from 2 to 4 p.m.

The late Amherst artist Maggie Smith founded and taught the Amherst Senior Center Art Workshop for 20 years, starting in the late 1970s. When she died, several members of the group decided to continue meeting without a teacher. Varying in number from six to 10 members, the group has been gathering weekly ever since. Now they meet Thursday mornings from 9 to noon, "with a coffee klatsch break in the middle," said group member Howard Leavitt, collecting nods and chuckles by adding, "That's the most important part."

"Howard gets antsy If I haven't gotten the oven ready by about 10:45," said Peter Ivy, who has been painting with the group for 16 years. "We have fun. That's the main thing."

"For me the group is essential, because I don't like to paint by myself," Leavitt said. "There's a group spirit that energizes me and that's why it's so important to be in a supportive, friendly group."

Leavitt has been painting for 35 years, starting at age 50. "When I was in fourth-grade - I was 10 - I took an art class and got a C," he said. "It was a message to me that I had no talent whatsoever.

"At age 50, I met a professor of art at Penn State and she said, I bet you have hidden talent, and if you sign up for my adult ed class, I'll prove it to you.'

"And bless her soul, If it hadn't been for her, I wouldn't be exhibiting today," he said.

Leavitt will be showing a series of oil paintings, including a brilliantly colored, highly textural floral still life, as well as several of his favorite subjects - bright boats bobbing in lake and harbor scenes, drenched with light and reflections.

Ivy, 86, who is retired from a career in the aerospace defense business, started painting at about the same time as Leavitt. He was 47, and remembers well a class he took with a painter on Long Island, New York. "Mrs. Smith, we called her. She left me with some of the principles of color and composition I still use," he said. "And every subsequent [teacher] has given me something, which encourages me to continue."

In the Valley, Ivy has studied oils with Barbara Johnson, watercolors with Louise Currin and pastels with Rema Boscov.

Though he painted in oils for years, he switched to pastels and watercolor about seven years ago. All three media will be represented in the collection he'll be showing. One atmospheric watercolor depicts a boatload of tourists as seen from the back - he was in the boat behind - navigating a river in the Costa Rican rainforest.

Group member Alia Starkweather, the baby of the group at age 71, is another artist drawn to tropical scenes. "My whole kitchen is a rain forest," she said. On 19 large cabinet doors, she painted lush scenes, populated by fauna including a gorilla, a toucan, hummingbirds and dragonflies. She recently returned from a trip to the island of St. John in the Caribbean, where she painted island scenes on wood and rock. "I paint what excites me," she said. "I have about 200 photographs of ocean just waiting to see what grabs me."

Starkweather says she spent 40 years raising seven children before plunging into the arts with a vengeance about 10 years ago. Now, in addition to the painting group, she belongs to dancing, singing and writing groups as well.

Along with her original impressionistic oils, acrylics and watercolors, she will be showing a display of greeting cards created from her works.

Unlike most of the members, Evelyn Newton, 86, grew up sketching and drawing. She remembers an uncomfortable moment in a high school civics class when the teacher suddenly confiscated a drawing of him she was absorbed in, to the exclusion of listening to the lecture. As she recalls, he was not amused.

She went on to a long career teaching art in high school before retiring and focusing on her own work. "Painting and quilting fills my life now," she said. "The painting group is the highlight of my week, really."

In the show, she will be exhibiting a range of realistic landscapes, seascapes and still lifes.

Like Newton, Ergun had taken up pencil drawing as a hobby in high school, and never stopped. During his long career as a physician in obstetrics and gynecology in his native Istanbul, Turkey, it was his way to reflect and relax, he said. "If I had 30 minutes [between appointments] I would draw."

But he'd always had a yen to try painting, so a year after moving to Amherst in 2002, when he heard about the Senior Center workshop, he decided to sign on.

Now Ergun's collection of remarkable realistic oil paintings includes scenes from his native country to his Amherst backyard, his years of pencil drawing translated to meticulous rendering of color, light and shadow.

"His work continues to give, the more you look at it," said David Henion, who hosted Ergun's first solo show at Henion Bakery in Amherst last May. "He has a high level of technical ability."

"Howard [Leavitt] asked me how did I know I could paint," remembers Ergun. "I said I didn't know I couldn't."

The group show by the Amherst Senior Center Art Workshop will be on view through Feb. 29 at Burnett Gallery at the Jones Library at 43 Amity St. Gallery hours are Sunday and Monday, 1 to 5 p.m.; Tuesday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Celtic harpist Sarah McKee will perform at the opening reception Saturday, from 2 to 4 p.m., including still lifes, a fly-fishing scene and a landscape of the Grand Canyon.

They're perfect people with pleasant personalities," he said. "By looking at them, I learned more and more."