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IPPIIllW^ There’s No Gray on Their Pallettes 'These elderly artists prove age is no obstacle to talent

By Margery Byera Gilbert Stuart painted a portrait of John Adams in JB26 when he was 71. Benjamin West wan 81 in 1819 when he ex ecuted a aelf-portrait. Benjamin Franklin invented the bifocal lens'When he was in his 70s. And Verdi composed Dfe/fb wh]qn he was 73. You're onl)) os old o» you feel and Age in a stole o/ mind may be hackneyed expressions, but they also are true Some people are old at 21, others young at 80, or as Oliver Wendell Holmes put it, "To be 70 years , young is sometimes more hopeful than to be 40 years old." The image of grandpa and grandma doing little but tell mg stories, rocking and knitting.sweaters is less valid now than ever before For generations, manv members of the uraylng population have rightly rebelled against these stereotypes, and many more - in large part, because there really are many more of them - are doing so today Indeed, older Americans are the fastest growing seg men! of ojir population. One of every seven Americans is 80 years old or over, and that figure is expected to increase. Older Americans have become a powerful political force as well; organized into nationwide groups, they have tirelessly lobbied Congress to revise or abolish mandatory retirement ages, seeking to prove that age is no harrier to creativity and inspiration TIIK C AKKKRH OF OI.DKK AUTIKTS who continued to work well into their later years is a testament to the older Americans' cause. Thomas Hart Benton died at 85 in 1975, a few hours after working.on a mural in his studio. He had maintained for years that each mural would be his last "I’m Just too old to do all that climbing of ladders.” Maria Martinez, the San Ildefonso pueblo potter, created her world-renowned black pottery until she was in her 90s Grandma Moses, who died at 101, began to paint at 76 when her arthritic fingers could no longer embroider. Henri Matisse, confined to his bed, cut out brightly colored paper patterns which were acclaimed whtfn they went on exhibit 24 years aftth - his death at 84 in 1954. Artist John Grabach avoided admitting his age but. when he died in 1981. his World War I draft card revealed that he was 101 He never stopped producing paintings. IN A TRIBUTK TO TIIK DEDICATION and vision of older artists such as these, the paintings of older Americans have been highlighted in a 1982 wall calendar published to commemorate the While House Conferehce on Aging. The calendar contains 12 pointings from the col-

JOHN ADAMS PORTRAIT was painted by Gilbert Stuart, then 71. in IH26. Won’t help Wildlife — (From Page 26) education in the schools, and by making an inventory of species by area of the state. Ms Herrington points out that the tax is designed to obscure the fact that the Game Commission routinajy spends large sums of money to increase the populations of "game" at the expense of "non-game" animals. New Jersey currently spends about $6 million every year (received from federal taxes) on "habitat manipulation" to explode populations of game animals for hunters, she said. This is done by burning, clear-cutting forests, and bulldozing to increase browse feed for deer, and by flooding to attract geese and ducks, thus making them readily accessible to hunters throughout the state. The reason New Jersey—and the nation— are losing the vast majority of wildlife species, Ms. Herrington asserted, is precisely because this policy of “habitat manipulation" kills millions of animals outright and erases permanently the habitat needed by most species of "non-game" animals for reproduction and survival. She said the $250,000 anticipated frbm the tax check-off cannot conceivably counter the vast sums of money spent on a policy that created the problem in the first place and will perpetuate it SHE ASKS. Is the New Jersey public so gullible as to think that $250,000 supposedly spent on 600 ‘non-game’ species and $6 million for about 30 ‘game’ species will preserve nature? Are the people sold on the idiotic concept on 'wildlife management’ which divides wildlife into ‘game’ and 'non-game' species? Don’t the people know that the ecological havoc called ‘habitat manipulation' is done on their public land, paid for by their taxes? "As friends of animals with a respect for nature, we stand for acknowledging the intricate relationships of all living things — plants, animals and humans — all of which share the globe called Earth. We must work to get rid of the 'Game Commissions,' stop tax-support for the 'recrea lion’ of 'sport-huntingiand trapping' and help Mother Nature keep the Earth alive by bringing to an end the burning and flooding of our public land," she said.

lection of the Smithsonian's .National Museum of American Art; almost all the works, including paintings by George Inness. Georgia O'Keeffe, Gilbert Stuart, Alma Thomas and Benjamin West, were created by artists after the age of 60 "Just as pAinling is far more than the pigment that adds the color or the wood that makes the stretchers so, loo, creative genius is more than lechfrique or even vision," Ur Robert N Butler, director of the National Inslilureon Aging, wrote’in an Introduction to the calendar " By viewing the paintings of these qrlist. wo see that beauty and genius are ageless and that creative imagination is not limited by time " , Time has certainly been no obstacle to Georgia O’Keeffe, now- 94 As famous as she has been indomitable, O'Keeffe has long refused to let poor vision stop her from painting Laurie Lisle,* in Portrait of an Artist. A Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe, writes of this instinct for artistic survival despite shadowy vision: "She even courageously and proudly remarked that her new way of seeing light, shadow, color and line was •interesting' iibd that it gave her new painting ideas .O'Keeffe learned to take lubes of point to her housekeeper, ask her to readout loud the names of the colors on the labels and then, with the information memorized, she would return to her studio " New York Qty sculptor Seymour Upton, still exlraor"The errative person who loses the upon tanclty and nalvate of his childhood becomes an academician."

dinarily vigorous at 78, has said he feels like a man of 40 "He’s lean and lough and in top shape," says Harry Rand, curator of 20th-century painting and sculpture at the. National Museum of American Art "He gets up at 6 and,-by 8 he's wrestling his sculpture together " WITH HIS STRONG RIGHT HAND, partially developed by years of totirnament tennis. Lipton manipulates huge cutting shears. "I'm still exploring." Lipton explains. "To me. sculpture is a.great adventure, unending and always fresh. There it no such thing as maturity that is jiist a word The crelative peason who loses the spontanci'y and naivete of his childhood becomes an academician What you gain with experience is a sense of control hut my next piece is as ciciting us the drawings I made in public school." It usually takes many years for artists to attain recognition, and despite illness, a sense of humor can feed their creativity long after many of their contemporaries havi* retired to rocking dhairs. Peggy Bacon, now 86 and living in Maine, is known for incisive and penetrating caricatures as well as illustrations for approximately 60 books Over Hie decades, she has lost little of the freshness and frankness ofJ>cr youth, and henwil has delighted everyone She was suffering from a joint disease when she turned 80. but her humor surfaced even then "My bones were grinding together you could-ttear them." she sflid at the time "They made reports like a pistol." She Was given a false hip of steel and plastic, spent two months in the hospital anfl promised to use a cane which she called "a peculiar and dreadful looking thing with treads on it " WHEN COMPLIMENTED ON HER remarkable recovery, she retorted; "The surgeons perform these miracles and they get old battered relics back on their feet again. My face looks as if it'd been ploughed I'm not really very vain but I don't like to look dilapidated " Although partiallay blind, she continued to paint in her Maine home — with a magnifying glass mounted to hel* drawing board. Alma Thomas, who lived in Washington, D C . did not begin to paint seriously until she was in her 60s, following

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many years as a demanding Junior high school teacher who expected her sludehts to excel Well educated and a member.of a middle class family, she had a strong per sonality and a flair for the dramatic, and she was lolallv dedicated to her arl and her students She found young people stimulating, enjoyed being surrounded by her pro leges and providei).Scholarships to promising Hludenis Energetic and enthusiastic, she continually wlorked to perfect the techniques of her cfafl HANDICAPPED UV ARTHRITIS, she sallied forth to Washington art opohmgs with a gold-headed cjme and continued to create her joyful paintings A mjmlier o| these are on exhibit at the National Museum of American Art in Washington, f) C . through Feb 22 Thorhas used her kitchen or llvingroorn as a studio, propping the huge canvases on her lap or balancing them on a *jofa. She pointed with a firm stroke, but first she had to spak her or thritic hands in hot water to enable her to bold a paint brush "There's, not long like aching knees when you gel old, she once told Adolphus Ealey. director of the Harneli Aden Gallery in Washington ' Do you have any idea what it’s like to be caged in a 78-year old body and to have the mind and energy of a 25-year old'’ If I could only turn the clock back. I'd show them* But she did show them with, in H/72. a one woman ex "To be 70 y&ars young is somolimos more hopeful than to be 40 years old "

hihitinn at the Whitney Museum of Arrtenean Arl in New York City and a rotrospociive at the Corcoran Gjillcrv of AYt in Washington dn 1977. the year before she died, she visited the Matisse .cut nut show at the National Gallery ol Art several times "If that old guy can still nil out.paper she said defiantly. "I can still paint pictures " Margdrv ,Byers, wrote this for the SmiUfHonitin Men s * •Service l ’ Helping Mother Nature (From Page 26) showing more interest in preserving vanishing species than is our fodcroj government, 1 which has its own En dangered Species Act. buf which too often lets it be used as a scapegoat against silly federal projects As long as public officials bow to greedy pork barrel projects, such misunderstandings'will happen Worse yel, the latest political climate in Washington is such that many of us see real danger for what pitiful support endangered species now have But here in New Jersey the program, while admittedly limited to too few species, has taken root with the public financing available now through the income tax checkoff. We've had the program since 1973, but it had been funded (or not funded) annually by legislative action This led to fiscal hunger Interestingly, an Eagleton Poll showed that 76 per cent of New .Jersey residents would voluntarily contribute via the inedme tax checkoff. Even more interestingly, about 90 per cent of those saying they would contribute fell into the 18-29 age group. That’s a healthy sigh of environmental concern grdwing among the younger folks. MERELY PROTECTING ENDANGERED species through laws, necessary as they are. is only the tip of the iceberg There must be much more soph'istication in the study of basic eulogy, which as you know is the science of interrelationships among living things This means that for every management action to favor one species, we’ve got to learn what that action’s impacts will be on every other species. If.that sounds like a scientific can of worrhs, I can only agree But that’s the way it is here in a world which makes technological advances faster .han it can assimilate them. Probably, Scientific sophistication about the sideeffects of its own breakthroughs will always lag behind The danger of this situation becomes clear, however. » when we strip-mine, clear off forest, dredge wetlands and perform other acts to meet human and economic needs There's got to be.more insight into the effects of these ac V tions on all the other life forms, many of which remain un discovered For starters, wp need those dollars from our income tax refunds! David Moore is executive director of the N.J Conserve tion Foundation. ^