Art With Elders has been in partnership with The Reutlinger Community and Artist Instructor Betty Rothaus for many years. This exhibit features work from eleven of her Artist Participants, as well as images and brief biographies of the artists.

Bringing Unique Visions to Life

Full time Artist-in-Residence, Betty Rothaus, MFA, (center above) offers residents individual guidance in bringing their unique vision to life. Within a beautiful fine arts studio, residents who have never created art before, as well as experienced artists, enjoy learning new skills and expressing themselves through drawing, painting in oil, acrylic, pastels or watercolor, sculpting/pottery in clay, collage, textiles, jewelry and/or mixed media.  Exhibitions each year provide a joyous sharing of our residents’ accomplishments with the entire community.  The Reutlinger Community Art Program

Betty Rothaus
AWE Artist Instructor
https://www.bettyrothaus.com/
Remember to Remember who you are and where you are. The Master of the Good Name taught: there is a river of pure Love that flows through the universe…connecting all people, places and things. We may …“draw power from this stream of blessing at any time. All that is required is to pause and remember it’s always there.”* The problem is that we forget. We are very “busy.” Each day, thousands of thoughts and feelings anchored in the past or future prevent us from being present. They prevent us from enjoying beauty, distract us from loving ourselves, and others and from seeing and appreciating the richness and magic surrounding us. Being aware of who we are, where we are, in the present, we can fully live the precious moments of our lives. My mission is to remind us to be present – to our gifts and blessings – and to celebrate daily with joy and gratitude.

 

Marjorie Cohen
When Marjorie, known as Margie by her friends, first saw the work of AWE artists hanging in the halls of Reutlinger, she realized that maybe her art could be up there too. She began attending art class this spring and is happy to be succeeding now in the one subject—art–she had trouble with growing up. She enjoys doing landscapes, especially blue sky and water.

Born in Albany, New York in 1940, Margie was an only child who involved herself in the world of art and music–tap dancing, playing trumpet in an orchestra, marching band, and female dance band as well as singing in the chorus. A former middle school English teacher, she lived in various East Coast cities and her happiest memories revolve around raising her two sons. She now has three grandsons. Having lost her husband, Ira, after close to fifty years of marriage, Margie has found art to be “a nice completion, occupying my mind and my senses” in the process of grieving.

Margie has been an avid baseball fan of both minor and major league teams since the age of eight, and loves music, especially jazz. She believes in the importance of not taking yourself too seriously and describes herself as an inquisitive person. At this point, she says, “Art completes my experience.”

 

Robert DeMatheis
“Forest Spring”  broadened my perspective of distances.

Through painting the faint mist of the background, the solidness of the cliffs in the middle ground and high contrasts of the forest in the foreground, I created the illusion of space!

After painting this, the brightness and the colors reminded me of springtime.

 

Joan Gill
Thanks to AWE, “Joan started becoming an artist at the age of 91,” says her son Tom. She’s living proof that it’s never too late.

Joan worked in New York, where she was born in 1926, as an interior decorator for one of the nation’s first big department stores, Lloyd and Taylor, but she devoted most of her life to care giving. She raised four children, cared for her mother and later for her husband in memory care. But she always made time to care for others too. When living in North Carolina, she delivered puzzles to people in nursing homes. As Tom points out, “She did things throughout her life that the world doesn’t celebrate.”

Joan and her husband, an IBM executive who travelled extensively, lived in Europe for a number of years and enjoyed golfing together. But her passion throughout her life was always flowers. She cared for a large rose garden, where she would sometimes appear in white heels, one of the many pairs of shoes she loved. Long-stemmed roses were her favorite, which became the subject of some of her earlier paintings.

You can find her three times a week in Reutlinger’s art room, expressing in her art what she may not be able to say in words. She likes it when “all the shapes are getting along.”

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