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LANETT – With the assistance of a retired educator, Lanett seniors on Wednesday learned of some latent artistic talent they’d had for many years but didn’t know about.

Dr. Larry Kelley retired four years ago as an assessment and teacher evaluation specialist at Wesleyan College in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. 

Retirement has allowed him to concentrate on his long-time love of photography and helping people bring out their inner selves.

“I’ve taken many, many photographs over the years,” Kelley said. “What I like to do is to make black and white reproductions of them and get people to use their imaginations of painting them with watercolor.”

The seniors had fun giving their 8 x 10 photocopies different looks. 

In one of Kelley’s photos of a rustic old barn, some seniors gave it the basic red barn look with a black roof. Others painted the old barn tan with a dark brown roof. Both versions looked like color photographs. All versions had green grass and blue skies.

There was similar experimentation with Kelley’s black-and-white images of flowers.

Some of them looked just as pretty painted red as they did with a yellow appearance.

The seniors did great work in keeping color within the lines. 

The green watercolor was where the grass was, the blue was on the sky and red and black on the barn.

“We want to thank Dr. Kelley for joining us today and leading un this fun learning experience,” said Senior Center Manager Sandra Thornton. “From the smiles on your faces, I know you enjoyed it.”