Marianne Stokes is an artist. Do you prefer your portrait in oil, water color, charcoal, Rodda’s paint? Or how about a sculptured head for your mantel? Ms.Stokes does it all. Wait, there’s more: Say you wanted to pull your neighbor’s chain a little bit. Have Marianne paint your garage door to look like a pig pen with a few porkers standing around.
Marianne and Herb, her husband of 38 years, have recently taken residence on the fifth floor allowing Marianne to immediately merge into the social life of the Russellville community. She conducts weekly free model drawing sessions working with live models for wannabe artists (can you draw a straight line? You’re an artist.) at Russellville as well as free model sessions at two other locations in Vancouver.
As Frank Sinatra came to the end of his career, Paul Anka composed a song for him that was his mega hit: My Way. Paul could have written the song for Marianne because from the time she was a little girl she was doing things her way. When she was seven or eight, her drawings went unnoticed by her mother and father. By the time Marianne was in high school she had evolved her drawing skills to an advanced level of excellence so that she delighted classmates by doing their portraits. She was also a top academic student.
While she earned a BA degree in fine arts from Hofstra University on Long Island, Marianne found little in the arts classrooms that she hadn’t already discovered on her own. After graduation she taught art in the public school system on Long Island but the routine life of reporting to school administrators was a giant turnoff for her and she dropped out of public education to offer private art classes.
Marianne taught herself calligraphy to use in a sideline she was attracted to by the large prices sign painters charged for their commercial work.The art schools offered no classroom instruction for sign painting which they considered beneath their calling so Marianne scouted around to find an apprentice position. There she could learn the ropes of this unique profession (an early assignment from her master sign painter was to paint letters on to a large glass door and then, when it was dry, scrape it all clean with a razor blade). She soon left her trainer and opened her own shop. As the only woman in a niche occupation filled by good old boys, (no traditional education required) Marianne built a lucrative business painting signs and murals that stood out because of the artistic flair she introduced to mundane assignments. She was untroubled about using her exceptional artistic talents to mine gold in lowbrow shafts. Once it’s in the bank, all money looks the same. Marianne’s artistic touch with signs brought her many commissions in boat yards lettering transoms of yachts using gold leaf.
Marianne has three sons who live in New York.
On a cold, snowy, Christmas night in 1976 while with a Catholic singles group, she was introduced to the greatest guy she had ever met. His name was Herb Stokes. Herb turned out to be her favorite Christmas gift that keeps on giving. She and Herb enjoy the relaxed pace of life in Russellville where she still pursues her interests as an artist, whatever the form it takes. Because, like old Blue Eyes, she does it her way.
