Paint, we got fun! Lougheed follows her passion

Sheila Lougheed says: “If Georgia O’Keefe and Jackson Pollack ever reproduced, I would be their child.” Lougheed’s vibrant, ebullient paintings do reflect the influence not only of her own endearing, exuberant persona, but also O’Keefe’s erotic rhythm and Pollack’s spontaneity and application of layers.

Born and raised in Danbury, Conn., Lougheed is a tall, colorfully elegant woman with an asymmetrical tousle of recalcitrant silvery curls and an irrepressible sense of humor inherited from her Irish father.

Her earliest memory of wielding a paint brush was at age 2, when her dad was fixing up their first house. “I found some red paint and thought, ‘I should paint.’”

So the toddler confidently set to work painting – the barn, the garage, the bathroom – and wondered why her dad didn’t share her enthusiasm. “I was just – enhancing,” she remembers with a laugh.

Although dismayed when their daughter’s artistic tendencies didn’t subside, both parents lovingly supported her, while trying, subtly, to steer her toward a more traditional career path.

“When I was 3, I was watching my dad get a haircut. The barber had painted a lot of cartoon characters on the shop walls and my dad said, ‘See what a good artist HE is – and he’s got to cut hair to make a living.’”

Undeterred, she matter-of-factly replied, “Well, I’m an artist!”

As a second-grader in Catholic school, Lougheed and her classmates were told to draw a picture of what they wanted to be. “I didn’t know we were expected to draw a nun or priest, or teacher or fireman. I drew a cartoonist for Mad Magazine. My mother got a call from the concerned nun.”

Her always perfectly-turned-out mom did have to put her foot down to get her tomboy daughter to wear dresses to school. But her loving support never ceased. “She always, always tried her best to understand my work. She was so proud of me. She’d tell her friends, ‘My daughter did this! I don’t know what it means but isn’t it wonderful?’” Lougheed lost her mom shortly before moving to Florida in 2014.

A graphic arts course at West Connecticut State College was “the closest I ever came to art school.”  Although her college career was cut short to “make a living,” she put her art skills to work at Danbury Hospital, eventually becoming an art therapist.

While Lougheed was pursuing a master’s degree at the College of New Rochelle, her world took a frightening turn: only in her 30s, she was diagnosed with colon cancer. She underwent lengthy, aggressive chemotherapy treatments. During most of her 30s, she says, “I was so sick.”

Making the ordeal worse, her previously unstoppable father had been taken gravely ill and was undergoing dialysis.

For a while, the doctors held out little hope for Lougheed, and she struggled to accept the probability that she wouldn’t see her 40th birthday.

“When you think you’re going to die, you go out and buy shoes in every color. You eat whatever you want. Nothing scares you. Nothing matters.”

She laid her paints aside.

But David Holzbach, Lougheed’s Danbury Hospital co-worker, was quite taken with the outgoing young woman and had kept in touch. Although undergoing chemo, and frequently violently ill, she accepted when Holzbach asked her out on New Year’s Eve. She recalls her aunt’s advice that, under the circumstances, “if he asks you on a second date, he’s a keeper.” He did, and he was.

During a 1993 trip to Florida to visit her parents, Holzbach asked Lougheed’s father for her hand in marriage. Sadly, her father passed away before seeing the couple wed the following year.

With the support of family and friends, they made it through the long cancer ordeal. On her 40th birthday, with Lougheed proclaimed cancer-free at last, they journeyed to the South Pacific, traveling to Tahiti in the artistic footsteps of Gauguin. And, at last, Lougheed started to paint again, beginning to make a name for herself in the Northeast, with several gallery exhibitions, including two in New York City’s Broome Street Gallery in Soho.

Moving to Sebastian, Lougheed quickly assimilated into the local art community, and began taking classes with well-known Dutch artist Frits van Eeden, whom Lougheed calls a modern day “Dutch Master.” After her third class, Van Eeden invited her to work in his studio under his supervision. “I immediately burst into tears,” she recalls.

Lougheed thrived under van Eeden’s mentorship, calling it “the best four years of my life. Can you imagine that gift? Almost every day, to absorb all that energy and creativity from a true genius? My whole world opened up.”

One day, Lougheed got a call from Carla Funk, executive director of Florida Institute of Technology’s Foosaner Art Museum. Could Lougheed prepare an exhibition? Van Eeden, a longtime teacher at the Foosaner, encouraged her and suggested flowers as a theme.

“I don’t want to paint flowers,” Lougheed protested, but she took her mentor’s advice.  She gave the project her all, and, after a year and a half, the collection was ready.

Then came the bad news. “Carla calls me and says, ‘We’re closing.’ Well, I immediately took to the couch with a bag of Doritos and the dogs.”

But not for long. Lougheed decided to revive a passion related to her Irish heritage. Back in Connecticut, Lougheed had taught step dancing. One evening during a break, she watched auditions for the Danbury Celtic Cross Pipes and Drums, as the director grew increasingly frustrated with the drummer applicants who couldn’t maintain the beat. He called Lougheed over and thrust the drumsticks into her hands. “You can keep a beat. So, dance with the sticks, instead of your feet.”

Then and there, the step-dancing artist became a bass drummer, performing with the band throughout the Northeast. One of her most popular paintings was an unplanned but joyful rendition of a bagpiper in full regalia, entitled “Then Danny Led the Band.”

Later, Lougheed tried out for the Vero Beach Pipes and Drums. Jacob Craig, the band’s Pipe Major and director of music at First Presbyterian Church, quickly realized Lougheed would be a great fit, even after she told him, “If you want Janis Joplin, I’m your gal.”

Some of her most interesting projects have developed through her friendship with Craig, an artistic kindred spirit. This year, during Lent, Lougheed set up her easel at the back of the sanctuary and spontaneously painted her interpretation of each Sunday’s sermon. The works were then displayed at a reception on Easter Sunday.

“She is singularly the most creative person I’ve ever met,” Craig says. “Her output is incredible, and she attaches meaning, intention and value to everything she does.”

Van Eeden describes his student with a torrent of praise: she’s impressive, incredible, passionate, original and fresh, he says. “She loves to experiment; she’s not afraid to make a mess, and make something of the mess. She’s taught me as well, kept me on my toes.”

This spring, hearing that the Foosaner had reopened, Lougheed decided to call Funk to see if she was still interested. Gathering her courage with determination and another bag of Doritos, she called. Funk was delighted and chose nine of Lougheed’s florals and six abstracts. For the formal reception at the Foosaner, “I bought every white flower I could find. David catered it. It was beautiful.”