Your Inner Genius
(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 63)
for the next several years, Phillips
patiently refined her technique, sometimes standing entranced before her
easel for hours. Today she is an award-winning abstract artist who works in
acrylic and encaustic wax in her home
studio in New Smyrna Beach, Florida.
“Painting catapulted me through my
final phase of grieving and loss,” she
reflects. “It basically saved my life.”
OF ALL THE QUALITIES that distinguish
older artists, perseverance may be
the most vital. The tenacity of author
Eugenia Lovett West, for example,
paid off in her ninth decade. West
had been writing on and off since the
1940s, when she married “a dashing
fighter pilot” named Eric West. They
had four children and lived on four
continents as he climbed the corporate ladder of an aluminum company.
She had been a member of the contest
jury, and I guess she disagreed with
the verdict.” West’s novel Without
Warning was published in 2007; a
sequel, Overkill, came out in 2009.
Two more books are in the pipeline.
“I’ve had an 11th-hour plot twist,”
West acknowledges. “But I hope it in-
spires older writers to persevere. It’s
a blessing to wake up in the morning
with the urge to create.”
Like West, Los Angeles–based
painter Henry Taylor—whose raw,
brightly colored works have been ex-
hibited in Paris, Berlin, and New York
City—knows about artistic setbacks.
The youngest of eight children,
Taylor admired the example set by
from the trunk of his car. Today those
painted boxes are considered folk art
and fetch up to $1,500 apiece in gal-
leries. Taylor’s larger paintings have
commanded as much as $35,000.
“I had all these ideas stored in drawers—
and my head. I never let go of the dream
that someday I’d come back to it.”
his hardworking parents—even if
they didn’t quite share his love of art.
“My father worked in maintenance at
Point Mugu Naval Base,” says Taylor,
52. “Dad loved baseball. Sports was
the thing we shared. And my mom
was a domestic worker. She was like,
‘Hey, just stay out of jail.’ But they had
my back when I didn’t even know it.”
He took some art classes at Oxnard
College in his 20s and knocked around
without much direction. For 10 years
Taylor worked as an aide to psychiatric patients at Camarillo State
Hospital, many of whom he found fascinating to draw (with their consent).
Taylor was in his mid-30s when,
encouraged by two art teachers from
Oxnard, he applied to the California
Institute of the Arts. “I didn’t know
what to do at that point,” he says. “I
just knew I needed to do something.”
But going back to school didn’t solve
all his problems. When Taylor gradu-
ated in 1995, he was pushing 40 and
had two children to support (to say
nothing of $20,000 in student loans to
repay). Desperate for cash, he peddled
his signature works—painted ciga-
rette packs and laundry-soap boxes—
Many an older artist sees her cre-
ativity bloom on the stage, not the
easel. Joanne Grimm, 77, was a retired
public-school teacher and principal in
Oakland, California, who wanted to
sharpen her storytelling skills as a
volunteer in a Head Start reading pro-
gram. “My lions sounded like hyenas,”
she recalls. “My elves sounded like mice.”
So she took a class at Stagebridge,
Oakland’s acclaimed performing-arts
center for older amateur actors.
