By Jeannie Sikorsky
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE

Rhoda Oakley always wanted to draw.

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. After college, she met her husband and started a family.

The family moved around quite a bit because her husband was in the Army. Once her children were of school age, Oakley knew this was her chance to take an oil painting class.

Combining degrees
Oakley not only took that oil painting class, she went on to earn a master’s degree in art history from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md. She combined her teaching degree with her art degree and has taught art history and related arts at Penn State and the Baltimore Museum of Art, among other places.

At the University of Maine, Oakley began teaching young men fresh out of the service. Because she wanted her students exposed to music history and theatre as well as art, she took them on field trips to Philadelphia, Boston, and New York. Oakley also began teaching women, many of whom were mothers just like her.

Museum travels
She remembers one of her students saying of class, “It’s like going on a trip every Friday.” That comment spurred her to arrange trips with her students to England, Greece, and Italy to visit museums.

In 1984, Oakley and her husband moved to Baltimore, drawn by the Baltimore Museum of Art, where she enrolled as a docent.

Art studio at Oak Crest
Oakley has lived at Oak Crest for three years. In addition to her current apartment home, she also has a studio apartment that she uses as her art studio. There she paints and plans to teach art history classes to her fellow neighbors.

She already holds sessions in her art studio when a special trip is scheduled to one of the local art museums. “I love the arts, but I especially love going to museums with other people to learn about artists from other countries,” Oakley says.