OXNARD : Students Show Their Stuff in Gift to Artist

Renowned watercolor artist Laurie Whitehead got an unexpected gift on her 63rd birthday Thursday from the students of Christa McAuliffe School in Oxnard.

At the close of her watercolor seminars for the school’s 900 students, scores of Whitehead’s pupils gave her artwork they produced using her tips. It was the first time, Whitehead said, that she has received anything tangible back from the nearly 48,000 grade-school children she has taught.

“I like to think that I planted a few seeds today,” said Whitehead, who lives and paints in a lighthouse on the Texas coast. “More than anything, I want to teach students that whatever talent they have, the more they train the more they can do with it.”

Whitehead is testimony to that credo. A rancher’s wife who dabbled in oil painting while raising five children, she got a divorce in 1975 after her youngest child entered college and then threw herself into painting full time.

She developed tremors from a bout of spinal meningitis that by 1987 had made it impossible for her to hold her watercolors steady. She underwent experimental brain surgery that year that restored stability to her right side, she said, but only after relearning everything from walking to painting.

Her painting “and Touched the Face of God,” a memorial to the seven astronauts killed in the Challenger explosion, hangs at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. She recently completed what she considers her greatest effort, “Quinto Centenario,” a work commemorating the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of America.

Though she is a realist painter, Whitehead demonstrates abstract, impressionist and line-design art to her students. “Abstract is the most fun to do,” she said. “And impressionism simply gives you visions of real things.”

“Most children love art,” Whitehead added. “I’ve never had a discipline problem. The children are always glued to what I’m doing.”