All the world's a canvas

Nevada artist Francis Colvin, surrounded by her artwork, looks at the first painting she created. --Photos by Ralph Pokorny/Herald-Tribune

Nevada, Mo. -- "I paint on about anything," 85-year-old Francis Colvin said. She stood in her basement studio, in the midst of dozens of paintings on media ranging from canvas to tiles to glass to stones she collected while spending one winter near Lake Powell, in Page, Ariz.

Colvin said that since she began painting one night in 1987 she has created hundreds of paintings, with some of them now in Washington and Michigan.

Until that night, she said, she had never thought about painting nor had any painting lessons.

Francis Colvin holds one of the stones she collected while visiting Lake Powell, Ariz. She said that the cross and the shadow behind it were already on the stone when she picked it up and she did not add anything to it, while she painted the rest of the stone.

Colvin said that she had been unable to sleep for three nights and she was lying in bed when it seemed like someone came and stood at the foot of her bed.

"A voice said 'Get up and paint,'" she said, adding that she had never painted before.

"I tried to ignore it, but the voice commanded me to paint," she said.

"I decided to do it," she said.

The only problem was that she did not know if she had any paint.

Then she remembered that she had an old set of watercolors that had belonged to her children.

She said that she found three boxes of paints in the basement along with two brushes. Since she did not know if any of the paints were still good, she took them all upstairs.

"What am I going to paint on?" she said was her next question.

Colvin said that she had some pieces of cardboard and that was what she used.

"I was up until 3 a.m., doing that first painting," she said.

She had no idea what she was going to paint when she started that first painting and she says that she still never knows what she is going to end up with when she starts, but the ideas just come into her head. Sometimes, she said, while she is sitting and resting she sees a picture.

"Maybe I paint what I see at that time. I don't know where the pictures come from," she said.

"I just feel the Lord will show me as I go. He is the master teacher," Colvin said.

"The way I want to do it may be different from what the Lord wants," she said.

She said that whenever she is exhibiting her artwork, she always puts a copy of her testimony up where people can read it.

"I think this is one of the reasons God gave me this, for the testimony and the obedience," she said.

Colvin said that she starts her paintings with the sky and "He gives me the depth and the background."

"It may be a summer scene and He may change it to a winter scene," she said.

"I love to paint the mountains," she said, speaking of a theme that flows through much of her artwork.

Her use of rocks for a medium came during the winter of 2004 which she and a friend, who plays the Indian flute, spent in Page, Ariz.

During that winter she taught painting to some of the Native American children and he taught people how to play the Indian flute for the Helping Hands organization.

While there she visited nearby Lake Powell and collected some of the rocks around the lake.

She later thought they were so pretty that she would use them for paintings.

Colvin said that she took some of her paintings on rocks to a craft show in Arizona and sold several of them.

She said that she does not have a favorite painting among all she has done.

"They are all different in their own way, You hate to get rid of one because they are like your children," she said, adding that they cannot be done again, because they would different.

Colvin said that she has not done any painting in several weeks and she would like to get started again, but she is waiting for the inspiration to come to her.