At 82, Artist Feels She Has Much Work to Do

“I may have to live to be 150,” Elizabeth Collins, 82, was saying during an interview in her Anaheim home, which is filled with her artwork. “I have so much more china to paint.”

It’s a matter of making other people happy.

“I like to please people, and painting is one of the ways I do that,” said Collins, who keeps herself fit with daily two-mile morning walks and a twice-weekly exercise class at the Senior Citizens Center in Garden Grove.

Besides painting plates in what she describes as traditional style with soft colors, Collins teaches classes in her home and is active in several art groups including California China Painters, Anaheim Art Assn. and Garden Grove Art Guild.

She is a past president of the three groups, which often ask her to lead seminars and workshops for new and advanced plate painters.

“I sometimes wonder why they ask me. There are many people who are better than I am,” said Collins, a 1928 graduate of Anaheim High School who also paints in oils and watercolors.

Cheryl Allison, current president of the Anaheim Art Assn. and an admirer of Collins, knows.

“She is a supreme organizer for all the groups and an amazing person who is a role model for everyone,” Allison said. “She has a great love for the cultural arts.”

Collins, who has four children, five grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren, did not start actively painting plates until she was about 42.

Collins first learned of plate painting from her mother, whose avocation was quickly overcome by the responsibilities of raising a family.

It wasn’t until after she raised her own children that Collins looked for something besides her piano to satisfy her creativity.

“A friend of mine asked if I wanted to take a ceramics class, and during that time, there was also a china painting class. That started me,” she said.

“During my lifetime, I’ve learned I have to keep on learning,” said Collins, a widow, who spends much of her time making gifts for friends and family. “I know when I’m gone the family will want” all of her works.

She would rather show her painted plates than sell them.

“I don’t work at selling them, and when I do I probably don’t charge as much as the time I put in it,” she said.

Finished plates sell for $45 and more.

Most of the people want plates for anniversaries, birthdays and family occasions, said Collins, who paints with quill paint brushes made from sable.

Plate painting is a popular craft these days--there are 450 members of California China Painters--but she would like to see more young people in her classes.

“It takes young people to keep it going,” said Collins, who finds it a problem to attract the young, since most of them are working and have little time to paint.

While she is fascinated with artwork, she also is active in the Historical Society of Garden Grove as its vice president and as an assistant docent.

“Old things fascinate me,” Collins said.