After leading art lessons for more than half a century, Jean Benson still tends to downplay her role.
“I don’t really teach,” the Bethel Park resident said. “Everybody comes in and paints their own things. I just help ’em out.”
Whatever she wants to call it, she’s back in action on Monday afternoons at the nearby Schoolhouse Arts and History Center on South Park Road, working with a loyal group of painters.
Although the covid pandemic postponed her ability to interact with fellow artists, her happening to be 103 years old hasn’t affected her talents.
“No one can paint like her,” Monday regular Rose Geer said. “None of us can duplicate what she does.”
Rose and her husband, Glenn, joined others on an April afternoon to create amid the inspirational atmosphere of a former classroom in the building that once served as the local high school, part of which dates back to 1905. Among them was Janet Jordan, who moved to Mt. Lebanon in 1969 and, shortly after, started an adult education program led by Benson.
“We’ve been painting together for years,” Benson said about her protégé. “She does oil painting on canvas. She’s fantastic.”
Although she also prefers to work with oils, Benson’s preference is for tole, the folk art of decorative painting, and she particularly enjoys replicating the appearance of flowers and fruit. Her latest completed project is rejuvenating a well-worn serving tray.
“I paint on anything, though,” she said, and her list includes the likes of a mailbox, shovel, hobby horse and vintage milk jug, along with multitudes of tables and chairs.
“We had a shop in Castle S hannon that was a resale shop, and we sold furniture,” she said. “I went in there and painted all the furniture. It was a big job, but it was a lot of fun.”
She is a longtime member of South Arts Pittsburgh, for which Jeanie Clayton Slater of Bethel Park and Tony Condello of South Park serve as co-presidents. They take plenty of pride in watching Benson carry on her tradition, even if they don’t quite buy her denial of being a teacher.
“You motivate these people to paint, right? You motivate and you encourage, and you help them,” Slater told her. “And that’s teaching.”
Another member of South Arts is John DelMonte, who maintains a studio in the Schoolhouse building. He’s 97, and Slater did the math, taking him and Benson into consideration.
“That’s 200 years of artists,” she said. “That’s pretty impressive.”
South Arts Pittsburgh was founded in 1984 to bring education, cultural outreach and networking opportunities to the community through various programs, which today include weekly open painting sessions on Friday mornings, figure drawing classes every other Wednesday evening, and fine art courses taught by professionals. For more information, visit www.southartspittsburgh.org.
