Robin Sanford Lamson wants to teach.
She wants to help mold future artists, much like the way her mom did for her. Lamson may not be your typical teacher-in-training at the age of 58, but it’s her passion for art that drives her to work with others. It’s all about the foundation, like with any of the detailed paintings hanging in her Concord apartment, which is why Lamson would like to work with the younger age group, preferably in the first to third grade range.
“I’d like to give them my excitement for colors and drawing,” Lamson said.
With fond memories of watching her mom give art lessons in their basement, Lamson wants to relive the excitement she felt as a young kid – just on the other side of the teaching process. She spent hours drawing and painting under her mom’s direction, and it’s a big reason why she’s still doing it today.
“She taught us a lot at the kitchen table,” Lamson said. “I was very, very young, probably 3 or 4 years old.”
And for someone who has spent countless hours in a classroom during her educational career – one that will continue in the fall as she works toward her associate degree at NHTI – Lamson knows a thing or two about how important the right teachers are.
Art has always been important to Lamson, and something that comes naturally. That’s why she returned to school in 2010, and has taken just about every class in the NHTI visual arts program. But there was a time when Lamson didn’t paint or sketch. She actually couldn’t.
At the age of 22, Lamson was a passenger in a car when it was hit by a drunken driver. She went through the windshield and was left severely injured.
“I wasn’t able to draw pictures anymore and that was heartbreaking,” Lamson said.
Lamson slowly recovered from her injuries and eventually returned to her career in commercial art. But she always loved sketching and painting – that’s why she went back to school.
“My artistic side came back almost immediately when I started taking classes again,” she said.
She takes two classes each semester and will soon be done with her associate degree in general studies with a concentration in visual arts.
“I’ve taken just about every art class they offer,” Lamson said.
She’s currently working on her senior capstone, the final project for visual arts students, as well as another handful of paintings. On her kitchen table sits an easel propping up a portrait of a teenage girl with a crazy zebra background. That girl is Lamson’s daughter, Stephanie, her youngest and only girl.
But portraits are not her forte. She can do them, but Lamson really enjoys creating a breathtaking landscape with the use of very bright acrylic colors. Two of her vibrant green pieces hang in the NHTI library instructional lab. She works mostly from pictures so she doesn’t have to spend days in one spot trying to work when the light is just right.
“I just take my camera with me everywhere,” Lamson said.
Her apartment walls are filled with all kinds of work. There are her watercolor seascapes, a pencil stippling (where a series of dots create a picture) and a goal of completing a city scape of places like Paris, New York or San Diego.
“I paint ‘cause I like to paint,” she said.
And while teaching is what she’d like to do to pass on all the knowledge given to her by her mom and professors at NHTI, Lamson also has another goal in mind for her art.
“I want to have enough to hang in a gallery,” Lamson said.
Maybe someday, both will happen.
