.jpg)
Glamour's Women of the Year
UD vs. Northern Kentucky
Magic visits with area students
Artist cannot rush 'The Four Seasons'
Self-proclaimed 'lady of leisure' was too busy to paint for 62 years; now she's an award-winner.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
CENTERVILLE — She calls herself "a lady of leisure."
With a steady hand and sharp eye for color and detail, she paints when she sees something beautiful, or pictures it in her mind's eye. "I don't do anything in a hurry," she said.
Extras
Julia Seibert's winning series of acrylic paintings titled 'The Four Seasons' includes 'Bluebird of Happiness,' representing summer. Seibert says she went 62 years without painting.
Bluebird of Happiness
Snow and Ice
From My WindowAt age 90, Julia Seibert knows what it takes to win.
Her "The Four Seasons" acrylic paintings that now hang in her art-filled room at Bethany Village took first place in the regional competition of the Association of Ohio Philanthropic Homes, Housing and Services for the Aging (AOPHA) contest and first place in the state contest.
It almost didn't happen.
"For 62 years I didn't paint," Seibert said.
Growing up a farm girl in Wayne Twp., her Romanian parents spoke Hungarian. An artistic child, she was offered a scholarship to the Dayton Art Institute after graduating from John H. Patterson Cooperative High School, "but it was the Depression and there was no money," she said.
Instead, she got a job at a local General Motors' factory, married at age 25, and raised a family of six children. "There was no time to paint then," she said. In high school, she painted in oil: flowers and scenes from nature; and the Sacred Heart, a picture of Jesus as protector, requested by her friend, Rose, who was entering a convent.
Rose later left the convent, got married and moved to Xenia, taking the painting with her, said Seibert's daughter, Kathleen Wallace.
Seibert continued to pray to the Sacred Heart for her son's protection during the Vietnam War, Wallace said. When her brother, Eddie, came home from Vietnam he visited his girlfriend's parents. He told them how his mother painted a Sacred Heart picture, but was never satisfied with the eyes.
The girl's parents hurried up to their attic to retrieve a painting left by previous owners. It bore Seibert's signature. They returned it.
A stroke in 2003 put Seibert in a wheelchair, but she's chosen to move about the world through a renewed interest in painting.
One of her four winning scenes shows autumn leaves viewed from her window.
Other Bethany Village winners
Doris Kettler, first place in Fine Art I for "Once in a While the Imagination Just Takes Off"
Marty Robinson, first place in Needle Art for "My Mother"
Louise Bailey, second place in Special 3D for "Falling Leaves"
