Artistic flair

By Christina Weaver
Special to the Coastal Point

	Special to the Coastal Point • M. PATRICIA TITUS Brent Poffenberger is ready to greet guests at the Coattage Café.

Not bad for a lady who, at age 82, proudly tells you her post-World War II years were consumed by raising the nine living children that resulted from her 14 pregnancies — in seventeen years. That was back in Chester, Penn., where she grew up, found love and lived, until moving to Plantation Park near Ocean View more than 25 years ago.

“I’ve always loved to draw, ever since I was in high school, but I didn’t really get into painting until my husband had surgery and someone gave him one of those little oil painting kits to get his mind off things. Well, he wasn’t interested and so I gave it a try, and I liked it so much I took a sketching class at the YWCA,” Studzinsky explained. “That was about 40 years ago, and then I got interested in ceramics and used to paint on the side of the pots that I’d make. After we moved here and my husband died (from work-related asbestos poisoning), I took a course in watercolors from (local artist) Barbara Dietrich to get my mind off things. Now I paint almost every day and as much in watercolors as oil.”

Studzinsky’s work is characterized by lively colors and living things. Whether it is a glimpse of a horse behind a fence in the forefront of a country landscape, or a seagull with wide spread wings swooping over the shore, or an older lady’s back bent over her flower beds, her images are kind, peaceful and reverential. She is now focusing on painting flowers and birds but like all artists is never satisfied.

“There is so much to learn, and watercolors are less forgiving than oils,” she noted, crediting the Millsboro Art League’s Tom Jones for helping her continue to grow and develop her techniques. Speaking of birds, her next challenge is a painting of a chicken or rooster. That is the subject for the next Art League competition.

“I’m going to do a fun picture, probably with a child in it,” she said.

It is at the St. Anne’s Church bazaars where her art caught the eye of Jeannie and Neil Fleming. An active church member since moving to the area, Studzinsky started to donate a different painting each year about eight years ago, and the Fleming’s have been high-bidder nearly every year.

“Rita has become one of my role models for growing older,” says Jeannie Fleming who is the church’s director of education. “And her paintings add such a cheery note to our home,” added her husband.

But there is a problem. Studzinsky confided that one of her pictures that is on display in Millsboro this month, and is on loan from the Fleming’s, is one that she really wishes she had never sold. It is a tender picture of her son and grandson at the water’s edge on the beach.

“I’m hoping they’ll let me swap it for another,” she said wistfully.

Another fan of Studzinsky’s work is fellow Pennsylvanian and St. Anne’s Church member, Charles Abrachinsky. With shelves of sweet memories, like licorice allsorts, Mary Jane’s, circus peanuts and horehound candies, adjacent to Studzinsky’s card display at the Bonsai Shop, he commented, “Rita is the loveliest lady. Her pictures remind me of the old time flower gardens that were so common back home.”

And that is what appealed to the couple that bought two of her cards, the very first day she put them in the store. “They came in to look at the jewelry and their attention was drawn to her flowers, ” said Jim Leighton, owner of the Bonsai Shop.

At $1.75 each, just 66 cents more than they cost her to get printed, Studzinsky’s art will not make her rich. But that is not the point. “It gives me such a thrill to think my painting brings happiness to someone else,” she said. And that is what art is all about.

Note: The Millsboro Art League’s gallery is located at 203 Main Street. The hours are from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. The next workshop is on April 4, with Sonia Hunt as instructor.

For more information, call (302) 934-6440 or go to the Web site at: www.angelfire.com/de2/millsboroartleague.