The New York Times recently wrote a fabulous article about 94-year-old painter Carmen Herrera. Julian Zugazagoitia, the director of El Museo del Bario in East Harlem, is quoted in the article as saying “To bloom into full glory at 94–whatever Carmen Herrara’s slow rise might say about the difficulties of being a woman artist, an immigrant artist or an artist ahead of her time, it is clearly a story of personal strength.”

Herrera, a minimalist painter has only over the last decade caught the eye of art historians and collectors. She says that “I do it because I have to do it; it’s a compulsion that also gives me pleasure, I never in my life had any idea of money and I thought fame was a very vulgar thing. So I just worked and waited. And at the end of my life, I’m getting a lot of recognition to my amazement and my pleasure, actually.”

While we don’t promise that you’ll sell your paintings for millions of dollars like Herrera, Engage As You Age does promise that you’ll have a lot of fun engaging in painting or other art activities if it is something that you’ve long loved or even possibly something that you’ve recently tried for teh first time. We’ve even found at Engage As You Age that some people in their 70s, 80s, 90s or even over 100 discover that they enjoy painting by trying it for the first time after they retire. You don’t have to be a gifted artist like Herrera to have fun. The key is to be engaged in something. Ideally you’re engaged not only in an activity but with someone while doing the activity. Oftentimes it is having someone there to encourage and inspire you to be engaged with your art that makes such a difference. We’ve found that this is particularly the case with those who have mild- to moderate dementia. That steady encouragement and inspiration by someone that you relate to and like makes such a difference in helping pick up that paint brush.

Herrera didn’t sell her first painting until she was 89 but did paint privately for over six decades. Born in Cuba in 1915, Herrera moved to NYC in 1939 and was one of the earliest abstract painters in Cuba prior to her move to the United States.

The New York Times article on Herrera describes her as working in “relative solitude since the late 1930s, with only the occasional exhibition.” Herrera’s husband, Jesse Lowenthal was a huge supporter of her work and also described by Frank McCourt (the author of Angela’s Ashes) as “an old-world scholar in an elegant three-piece suit.”

Below are some short video documentaries on Herrera: