Williamstown Woman Records North Berkshire in Acrylics
 Jean Bourn's return to painting was rewarded by being featured in the Williamstown Savings Bank's 2011 calendar. Above is the image for June. Below, a painting of North Adams' historic Eagle Street. |
"I've always loved painting," said Bourn who was exposed to art at a very young age. "My great-uncle was an artist and his work was all around the house ... I especially liked the scene of a pond."
Growing up in Pownal, Vt., Bourn attended Pownal Elementary School, where she
won an award for a drawing she made in fifth grade. "I won a book, 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,' and our teacher, Mr. Dolan, read it to the class that day. It was the first time I felt good about my artwork," Bourn, now 44, said recently.
She took art while at Mount Anthony Union High School in Bennington, Vt., and was encouraged by her teacher to continue. But then marriage and single motherhood intervened. Now raising three boys and a working as a receptionist at Williamstown Savings Bank on Main Street, she was not able to carve time from her busy schedule to put a paint brush to canvas.
"I dreamed of painting when I retired from work," she said. As it turned out, Bourn's love of painting did not allow her to wait that long and three years ago she returned to the canvas.
"When my youngest son was 12, I started painting again. I took a course at the Career Development Center in Bennington to refresh my memory about how to use paint," Bourn said. Her medium is acrylics and she paints mostly from images - flowers, animals, portraits, landscapes.
A co-worker, Doris Karampatsos, was the first to buy one of her pieces. "She saw my painting of a can of flowers and a bucket of water, and wanted it right away," Bourn said.Last year, Bourn brought 100 pieces of her work to the bank's Marketing Department hoping they would use one for the 2011 calendar. But they didn't want one — they wanted 12.
"I just couldn't believe it. I was so excited and happy!" said Bourn.
Included in those 12 paintings were views of the Hopper in Williamstown and of North Adams, spring blooms in Adams and the first pitch at a SteepleCats game.
Bourn paints almost every day, mostly in the evenings. "Everything else disappears from my mind. I am completely relaxed," she said. "Time slips by, but I have to go to work in the morning."
Her work was well received at the Williamstown Chamber of Commerce's Sundays at 6 street fairs this summer and she's taken orders for large works to hang over sofas, portraits of families and pets and even portraits of newborns. One woman ordered newborn portraits of each of her grandchildren; a man, a painting of his little granddaughter as a ballerina.
She is working on five portraits and a black and white painting of the Williamstown Savings Bank as it used to be.
"I love all aspects of painting, working on it, finishing it, selling it and making someone happy," Bourn said.
But of all her paintings, her favorite is of one of her sons on a tractor at the family's "little" farm.
Because of its sentimental value, she rejected an offer to buy it: "I could never part with it.
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