Maggie does not let age slow her down

Maggie does not let age slow her down

HITTING your sixties generally means taking it a bit easier career-wise and looking forward to retirement.

Not so for Maggie Thomas, who found a new lease of life as a university art student and is still painting prolifically 20 years later.

Painting in a variety of styles and media and attending art workshops around the country, at the age of 84 she is currently giving a solo exhibition in Downpatrick’s St. Patrick’s Centre.

A mum to five children, a single parent and a dental assistant, Maggie later turned to a career in social work before retiring at the age of 61. She could have been forgiven for taking it easy but instead she enrolled in the art department at the University of Ulster and four years later left with a BA honours degree.

“They were all very nice to me,” she said, recalling her student days. “They are told to take so many mature students, though mature means over 25.

“The girls there were always saying ‘Are you coming to the disco?’. I was the oldest student they had had.

“At 61 people thought I just wanted to retire. Everyone wanted me to put my feet up, buying my radios.”

But Maggie knew what she wanted to do. She had already been studying for her O-levels and A-levels and developed her interest in art during her role as a social worker.

Based in the Mater Hospital in the 1970s and 80s, she introduced the concept of art therapy when such a thing was rarely heard off. Getting the staff to “pull strings” to make it happen, she admits there was less red tape in those days to wade through.

“We got to be rather flexible with people,” she said. “I loved it, I loved the work. Some were understandably nervous but no-one refused to come back. Religious barriers were also down.”

Maggie said cancer patients, some coping with the shock of a sudden diagnosis, were among those she tried to help.

“We had to try to make them relax,” she said.

Going to university allowed Maggie to concentrate on her own love of art and she specialised in printing. Since then she has worked in many different media — oils, acrylic, prints and batik — and continues to attend many workshops and residential events such as the renowned Tyrone Guthrie Centre for artists in County Monaghan.

Various ‘objet trouvé’, often bits and pieces collected from Newcastle beach, are also displayed in the conservatory where she happily works at home.

“I will be 85 in September but I am not going to do nothing,” said Maggie.

When not in her Strangford conservatory Maggie can be found in Switzerland and California visiting her daughters and grandchildren. Previously she has held exhibitions in Donegal, Downpatrick, Castleward, Portaferry and Strangford, some solo, and others with friends or clubs such as Portaferry Art Club.

International illustrator Terry Ashton and ceramic artist Peter Meanley officially launched Maggie’s retrospective of work in the St. Patrick Centre at the weekend, which will be open to the public until April 18.