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Prime Times Weekly publication of the Mail Tribune , Medford, Oregon STROKES of persistency Photos by Andy Atkinson Although Marjorie Adleman has been a lifetime artist, graduating with an art degree from Syracuse University in New York, she switched to watercolors reluctantly. "It's hard," she says. "If you paint with oils, if you make a mistake you can paint right over it. With watercolor, if you make a mistake, it shows." Despite difficulty, Ashland woman works magic with watercolors By JONEL ALECCIA Marjorie Adleman considers herself a newcomer to watercolors, even after 15 years of study and practice. But to look at her paintings, you'd never know it. Gazing at the work of the 73-year-old Ashland woman, all an average viewer will see is the composition, the control -- and the color. A close-up cluster of morning glories is radiant in shades of lavender and pink. A riot of summer flowers surrounds a porch in shades of maroon and gold. A pale blue sea washes against an azure sky. "Marjorie has a beautiful command of color," says Betty Sumners, who exhibits Adleman's paintings in her Ashland gallery and flower shop, Bella Flora. "And her paintings are realistic, but it's a soft realism, as opposed to every little detail. Some works are only beautiful from far away, but not hers. It's as equally magnificent up close as when you get far back." Apparently, that has been more than enough to inspire the kind of praise that comes with a paycheck. In one month last fall, Adleman sold three paintings, one after the other. "I had put a `sold' sign on two of them," recalls Sumners, whose shop is at the corner of Siskiyou Boulevard and Tolman Creek Road. "I turned her around to the first one and her little jaw dropped. When I showed her the second, I thought she was going to continue to drop." Marjorie Adleman says she paints only two times a week. "There's gardening, shopping and socializing to do." Adleman's surprise was the shock of an amateur who finds that diligence pays off. Although she has been a lifetime artist, graduating with an art degree from Syracuse University in New York, Adleman came to watercolors reluctantly. "It's hard," she says. "If you paint with oils, if you make a mistake you can paint right over it. With watercolor, if you make a mistake, it shows." Adleman much preferred the kind of art that sustained her through a 42-year-marriage to writer and entrepreneur Robert Adleman, who died in 1995. She previously pursued fashion design, advertising illustration, interior decor and china painting. The pair lived with their two daughters in Philadelphia and in Malibu, Calif., where Adleman interspersed art with a glittering lifestyle that grew from her husband's career. Robert Adleman was the author of more than a dozen books, including a book about World War II. It was made into "The Devil's Brigade," a successful 1968 motion picture with William Holden and Cliff Robertson. "I loved it then," Adleman says of the Malibu years, when the family lived next door to actor Larry Hageman. "Whoever you read about in the paper, you saw on the beach the next day." She sold her artworks in chic boutiques in Philadelphia, Beverly Hills and New York. The Adlemans moved from California to Jacksonville in 1975, where they purchased 700 acres of land and built a home. During the 1980s, Robert Adleman owned the Bella Union, a popular Jacksonville restaurant. After selling the restaurant, the pair returned to Malibu in 1987 before settling in Ashland. It was then that Adleman got more serious about her studies with Bruce Butte, a longtime art teacher who runs the Jacksonville Gallery. Butte calls Adleman one of his "above average" students, a woman who is able to infuse her paintings with emotion. "She's a very sensitive lady," he says. "She paints a lot of family-wise things." A painting hanging in Adleman's living room, for instance, depicts the moment when she and her two daughters scattered Robert Adleman's ashes at the beach at Malibu. It shows three female figures, two embracing, one waving farewell as a rose floats on the waves. "You have to paint something you care about," says Adleman, a member of the Watercolor Society of Oregon. Even then, the technique of watercolors requires concentration. "The hard thing is to be free, for me. To be totally free," she says. "I'm always in the smallest corner with the smallest brush." Adleman could be a more prolific painter, chides her art teacher. She agrees, and thinks more sales could follow more effort. Adleman spends only two days a week painting now. "I'm sort of a slow painter," she says. "If I did it every day, who knows?" But at 73, Adleman says she knows the limits of her own dedication. "There's gardening, shopping and socializing to do." Watercolors, the newcomer adds, will just have to wait. Prime Times front page Mail Tribune front page Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA