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Story By Hazel Jump, Photos By Jodi Hutchison

Ask Brenda Clampit how she happened to pursue art as a sideline and she’ll probably tell you two things. First, that she never had art in school when she was growing up in Tuckerman, but was always interested in it. Second, it seemed like the logical thing to do at the time.

The time she speaks of is the day she woke up one morning and it dawned on her that there were only two people in the house — she and her husband, Henry. Son Matt had gone off to get an accounting degree at Auburn University in Alabama, and they were alone.

“I’m probably a prime example of empty nest syndrome,” Brenda says with a smile, looking around her studio and the numerous canvases that are stacked against its walls.

The studio came about some years ago, when they bought the house and Henry, perhaps sensing that it would some day be needed, told her, “I want you to have a place for your art.”

With Matt now a graduate of Auburn and associated with an accounting firm in Little Rock, the studio has turned out to be a great idea, and a wonderful place to retreat to with her paints and canvases.

“Now I have my art and he has his music,” Brenda says of her husband, who plays the acoustic guitar in a nearby room.

Brenda, special education supervisor for the Northeast Arkansas Cooperative in Walnut Ridge, has spent the past 36 years in the educational field.

“That’s my day job,” she says, “but rewarding as it is, it can be stressful as well.”

One of the ways to ease stress, she finds, is to paint.

“You pretty much lose yourself in it,” she says. ‘The pressures and the day-to- day problems that you have to deal with are replaced by your concentration on your work. You become immersed in it, and part of it.”

She had never done any painting until several years ago when she got involved in helping Metta Nesmith, a fellow parishioner at St. Paul United Methodist Church, who was creating some artwork for its children’s department. Metta, a painter herself, ended up being Brenda’s first instructor.

Her appetite whetted, Brenda began attending painting classes three nights a week at The Foundation of Arts in Jonesboro under the instruction of Otis Watson. Those lessons were followed with instruction from Candace Brown at Jonesboro’s Hobby Lobby. Since that time she has taken a number of workshops, some conducted by Timothy Tyler in Siloam Springs, and several five-day workshops with Karen Murphy in Republic, Mo.

When she began painting Brenda used oils, a medium she still prefers over any other.

“I love the transparency of it,” Brenda says of oils. “It is very forgiving. A lot of people don’t like it, but it takes longer to dry than other mediums, so that with oil you can make changes. It’s a medium that you can leave and come back to.I like the flexibility of it.”

The length of time it takes her to create a painting varies.

“Sometimes I have one completed in a weekend,” she says, “and sometimes it takes several months. I don’t normally sign it until I know my painting is complete.”

A member of the Northeast Arkansas Visual Arts League and editor of its newsletter, Brenda has had her work shown in its juried exhibitions, and has been a judge for the Northeast Arkansas District Fair’s art exhibit. Her paintings are also in a number of private collections.

She frequently holds painting classes at St. Bernard’s Senior Center, which has some of her pieces in its art gallery. Brenda also teaches oil painting classes at Hobby Lobby.

“I enjoy the students,” she says. “They may start off with the idea that you had in mind, but go off in their own direction and it becomes their own style. Their paintings take on the personality of the painter. The best part of the job is getting to watch your students and their approach to art itself.

“I am teaching, but I am learning, too. Every time I teach a class I come out learning more than they do. They put a new perspective on everything.”