Time Enough at Last: Painting helps Pleasants County woman brush aside pandemic
Mary Sommerville took up painting almost two years ago. She has had a number of subjects from landscapes to people with umbrellas and more. She has been amazed at what she accomplished, having never believed she could paint before. (Photo by Brett Dunlap)
Mary Sommerville, of Belmont, with one of the paintings she recently done. Sommerville took up art as a means to pass the time while at home during the COVID-19 pandemic and it has turned into a love of painting. She would like other seniors to pursue their interests and try something new. (Photo by Brett Dunlap)
Mary Sommerville, 92, of Belmont, took up painting almost two years ago as a way to pass the time while home during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. It has developed into a love of doing art. (Photo by Brett Dunlap)
Mary Sommerville, of Belmont, took up painting during the COVID-19 pandemic. She looks at many pictures to get ideas for subjects. In many cases, she is not sure she can do them but tries to see what she can accomplish. (Photo by Brett Dunlap)
For almost two years, Mary Sommerville, of Belmont, has painted a variety of subjects as a means to pass the time during the COVID-19 pandemic. With no training, she has done landscape scenes in a variety of different seasons, lighthouses and other subjects trying different things to achieve the look she wants. (Photo by Brett Dunlap)
Mary Sommerville, of Belmont, took up painting during the COVID-19 pandemic. She looks at many pictures to get ideas for subjects. In many cases, she is not sure she can do them but tries to see what she can accomplish. (Photo by Brett Dunlap)
For almost two years, Mary Sommerville, of Belmont, has painted a variety of subjects as a means to pass the time during the COVID-19 pandemic. With no training, she has done landscape scenes in a variety of different seasons, lighthouses and other subjects trying different things to achieve the look she wants. (Photo by Brett Dunlap)
Mary Sommerville took up painting almost two years ago. She has had a number of subjects from landscapes to people with umbrellas and more. She has been amazed at what she accomplished, having never believed she could paint before. (Photo by Brett Dunlap)
Mary Sommerville, of Belmont, with one of the paintings she recently done. Sommerville took up art as a means to pass the time while at home during the COVID-19 pandemic and it has turned into a love of painting. She would like other seniors to pursue their interests and try something new. (Photo by Brett Dunlap)
Mary Sommerville, 92, of Belmont, took up painting almost two years ago as a way to pass the time while home during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. It has developed into a love of doing art. (Photo by Brett Dunlap)
Mary Sommerville, of Belmont, took up painting during the COVID-19 pandemic. She looks at many pictures to get ideas for subjects. In many cases, she is not sure she can do them but tries to see what she can accomplish. (Photo by Brett Dunlap)
For almost two years, Mary Sommerville, of Belmont, has painted a variety of subjects as a means to pass the time during the COVID-19 pandemic. With no training, she has done landscape scenes in a variety of different seasons, lighthouses and other subjects trying different things to achieve the look she wants. (Photo by Brett Dunlap)
Mary Sommerville, of Belmont, took up painting during the COVID-19 pandemic. She looks at many pictures to get ideas for subjects. In many cases, she is not sure she can do them but tries to see what she can accomplish. (Photo by Brett Dunlap)
For almost two years, Mary Sommerville, of Belmont, has painted a variety of subjects as a means to pass the time during the COVID-19 pandemic. With no training, she has done landscape scenes in a variety of different seasons, lighthouses and other subjects trying different things to achieve the look she wants. (Photo by Brett Dunlap)
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BELMONT -- A Pleasants County woman took up painting during the pandemic to pass the time and has developed a love of art.
Mary Sommerville, 92, started painting for the first time almost two years ago around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
She received her initial paint and brushes as part of a special offer from Boston Scientific after having a medical procedure done and the art supplies were part of her rehabilitation.
"I thought, 'I can't paint,'" she said. "I never thought I would ever paint. I got these and I thought I would try."
It was during the early months of the pandemic when she wasn't able to go many places and stayed mostly at home that she thought she would see what she could do.
"I got into this and I just loved it," Sommerville said. "It was just so time consuming.
"The time just passed and I didn't realize it."
She went to Hobby Lobby to get some canvases to work on. She initially did landscapes depicting the different seasons of the year. They would include mountains and lakes.
As time went on, she tried doing more, like adding in animals, like rabbits, ducks, geese, deer and more to see if they would work. She has included a man in a boat in a summer scene.
"I had a terrible time with clouds and trees," she said of continually trying new things to see if she could get them to look the way she wanted.
She has grown to love doing winter scenes.
"I love making the snow," Sommerville said. "I didn't know how to do it so I took a toothbrush and dipped it in a little paint and flipped it onto the canvas. That worked."
She said she looks at pictures to get ideas.
"Once I started looking at pictures, it helped me," Sommerville said. "I would look at a picture and think, 'I don't know if I can do this, but I will try.'"
Her other subjects have included lighthouses, people with umbrellas and more. She did one based on a Christmas card where a boy was pulling a sled. She said she could not get the boy just right and at one point he looked like he was laying in the road. She painted over him and put a mailbox in his place.
Once she found a picture of a man with an umbrella in a storm. She changed the rain into musical notes to represent the song, "Sinning In The Rain."
She paints on her dining room table with the canvas laying down.
Initially, she hid what she was working on from her friends and family.
"I didn't want them to think I was crazy," she said.
However, eventually they were discovered with her family telling her they didn't realize she could paint.
"I told them neither did I," Sommerville said with a little laugh.
One of her grandsons has had art training and he told her he liked what she was doing.
When she wasn't painting she returned to one of her other favorite hobbies, playing the piano and working on the computer. She is hoping to get back to painting after Christmas as it keeps her busy during the winter months.
Right now, she has no idea what she wants to paint. She will see what catches her attention. She is surprised by what she was able to accomplish.
"I look at them and think, 'I didn't know I could do this, not that it is perfect,'" she said. "I look at them and see things I would have done differently and changes I would have made."
However, she is doing something she hasn't done before.
Sommerville wants older people to continually pursue their interests and to try new things, regardless of how old they are. Sometimes people have qualities and talents we don't even realize, she added.
"It is my hope this will encourage older people to try something they have never tried before," she said. "I look at some of these and can't believe I did some of them.
"I hope older people will try something new. There are a lot of different things out there, crafts and so on that they never thought about doing before that they can do. Once they get interested in something, it passes the time."
Brett Dunlap can be reached at bdunlap@newsandsentinel.com