As a young girl, Blair remembers her grandmother’s stories being made all the more fantastic through her small drawings.

“She was a frontier woman,” said Blair. “She made all our clothing. She taught me how to embroider and how to cook at age six.”

As a child Blair and her brother lived for a time with their grandmother. It was a quiet type of life, one where folktales were the best entertainment.

“She was telling us a story and she drew something, she drew a rabbit,” Blair said, remembering how captivated she was by the drawing. Later when she was a youngster in school watching another child draw, Blair decided that the process couldn’t be all that difficult.

“One day, a group of first graders were gathered on the playground watching a boy as he worked with paper and pencil,” she recalled. “I wanted to see what he was doing and found out that he was drawing a picture. I looked at his work and thought, ‘I can do that.’”

After that encounter there was no stopping her. Blair found herself drawing portraits of her pastor in church, or drawing other students and friends in school.

A fascination with art followed Blair as she traveled to Europe with her Air Force husband. Living in the Netherlands and Germany during the 1970s, Blair was fortunate enough to visit a few of the more famous art galleries and museums in the world. A trip to Rijiks Museum in Rotterdam to see Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch” still has a profound affect on her.

“It was amazing the color was still so vivid,” she said of the 1642 masterpiece. “Photos don’t do it justice.”

While in the Netherlands, Blair joined with other military wives to establish a support group where members passed on their talents to other wives – a sort of education co-op. One woman taught cake decorating (a talent Blair falls back on sometimes when preparing special confections for family and friends), another hair styling, and Blair lent her talents to teach art classes. After those first few lessons, the wives asked to continue learning how to paint.

Today Blair favors working with oils, using a wet-on-wet technique that give her paintings a striking, photographic quality. Her favorite themes are people, and creating realistic portraits.

“Oil paintings have a lifelike quality that brings vitality to a painting,” Blair said, adding she still loves the sense of balance and detail she can achieve with pen and ink.

Having retired from military life in Niceville, Blair continues to teach classes from her home and at Artful Things craft store in Niceville. She is also often seen at the Base Exchange demonstrating Grumbacher art products at both Eglin and Tyndall Air Force bases.

Her artwork is on display in February at the Coastal Branch Library of Walton County near the Walton County Tourist Information Center off State Road 331. The show features members of the Local Colors Art Club.