These Retirees Were Just Artists in Waiting

Wassef Boutros-Ghali/Courtesy of Albertz Benda Gallery and Rhona Hoffman Gallery Facebook Twitter LinkedIn

Want more evidence that your professional career need not define you after you move on? These retirees — among them a former lawyer, a marketer, a teacher and a therapist — have become

successful artists who have had major gallery showings or won prestigious awards, or both, with their “second act” of self-expression. To them, creativity and the passion to express it were

always there; they just lay dormant, waiting for the right time to emerge.

— Additional reporting by Jennifer E. Mabry

Abstract painting, Cairo, Egypt

The brother of former U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali started drawing from a young age, but he “belonged to a family that did not consider painting a profession,” he says. “Most

of my family studied law with the prospects of involving themselves in the politics of Egypt. I did not see this as my path.” Boutros-Ghali worked in architecture and historic building

restoration but retired in his early 60s to paint in his studios in Connecticut and Cairo. “My paintings reflect my architectural training,” he says. “Geometric precision with a sense of

place."

Painting, drawing, printmaking, Essex County, New York, and Newark, New Jersey

Painter was a professor of American history until 2005, when she retired to study art. “There are some really good things about American society, and one of them is that you can continue

your education at any age. There is just an amazing array of opportunities to change your life. I think the most important thing is just to start. I work step by step by step and see where

the process takes me. And I remember not to let it be easy. You don't stop at the first, second or third piece you make from that initial inspiration. You keep going and you go deeper."