PARKVILLE, MD – Rhoda Oakley always wanted to draw. That was all she ever wanted as a child. Unfortunately, her dream was during the Depression and her parents couldn’t send her to art school. Instead she went to teacher’s college so that she could make a living. Once finished college, she met her husband and started a family. She was resigned to the fact that she would never be an artist and settled into the idea of being a stay-at-home mom. But that was soon about to change.

Oakley and her family moved around quite a bit because her husband was in the Army. They were in New Jersey when her kids were of school age. Oakley decided this was her chance to take an oil painting class. The rest is history.

Oakley not only took that oil painting class; she went on to earn a master’s degree in art history from Johns Hopkins University. She combined her teaching degree with her art degree and has taught art history and related arts for the past 50 years.

She has taught at Penn State, and the Baltimore Museum of Art. It was at the University of Maine that Oakley got to teach young men fresh out of the service, who got to attend school because of the GI Bill. Many of these young men had never even been outside of Maine, much less learned much about art. Oakley wanted them to be exposed to not only art, but to music history and theatre as well. She took them everywhere from Philadelphia to Boston to New York and exposed them to culture. In addition to these students, she got to teach many women her own age, many of whom were mothers just like her.

She said she remembers one of her students saying of class, “It’s like going on a trip every Friday.” That comment gave her an idea and she began taking her students on trips to Florence, London, Greece, and Italy to see the museums and be consumed by the arts that they may never have gotten the opportunity to see otherwise. This was one of the best times of Oakley’s life as an artist and teacher. Oakley remained at the University of Maine for 17 years.