Retiring to an assisted living facility has not slowed down the former longtime Malibu resident, who continues her passion of digital art.
By Ward Lauren / Special to The Malibu Times
At age 88, possibly the world’s oldest digital artist, Mildred Jarrow Riley is still creating and exhibiting ever-new forms of her unique artistic talent. A longtime Malibu resident, now residing in the Belmont Village assisted living community in Rancho Palos Verdes, Riley’s work is currently the subject of a private exhibition, “An Artist’s Perspective,” at the facility.
Some 25 of her “paintings,” mostly digital but including some oils and mixed media, are being shown in the exhibit, which will continue through Jan. 20. A prize drawing will be held for one of the pieces, with proceeds to benefit the Cancer Research Center at Torrance Medical Center, exhibition coordinator Julie Walke said.
A resident of Zuma Bay Villas in Malibu where she lived on and off for 30 years, Riley moved to her new home a year ago. Still a member of the Malibu Art Association among many others, Riley continues to work every day. She does not limit herself to the computer, she said, but works in all media.
The wildly colorful abstractions displayed there are characteristic of Riley’s positive, upbeat personality.
“I love colors,” Riley said in a recent telephone interview. “My name is ‘Mild red’ you know, although maybe ‘wild red’ would be more appropriate!”
Born in Chicago in 1917, Riley was raised in Los Angeles and graduated from John Burrows High School. She was instinctively driven to art as a child, doing her first drawing on paper bags. In 1939, she married Pearce Rosenberg of Milwaukee and moved there where the couple raised their children, daughter Nancy and son Robert. Their father died in 1966 and Mildred later married Chapin Riley, with whom she lived in various places in Southern California, including their home in Malibu, until his death earlier this year.
Although never pursuing a formal art degree, Riley attended Northwestern and Wisconsin universities, as well as classes at other schools.
“[I] took all kinds of art courses. I was never working toward a degree, just learning whatever techniques I could,” Riley said.
She began with classical training in oils and watercolors but later worked with pencil, conte crayon and acrylics as well, progressing to a modernistic eclecticism encompassing both large and small paintings, assemblages, sculpture, furniture and clothing. One of her first shows was held in the Luntz Gallery in Milwaukee in 1981.
Riley joined the computer age after winning a bout with breast cancer when, as a recovering patient, she enrolled in a digital art program that required, of course, use of a computer. Undaunted by new technology that has driven more than one older adult to despair, she learned just enough to become adept in the programs and software she needed. Soon, computer art became more than therapy for her.
Adobe Photoshop is the main program she uses, sometimes taking a photograph and modifying it, and others, coming up with something completely original.
Riley is rightfully proud of her accomplishments in digital art. Many of her pieces have been shown in local galleries in Los Angeles as well as the Skirball and Getty museums. Her art, of all kinds, is also included in many world-class private collections and has been shown in prestigious galleries and museums for decades. Noteworthy are the Milwaukee Art Museum, Palm Springs Desert Art Museum, the Weintraub Gallery in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Art, Chicago Art Institute, the Rodeo Collection and BGH Gallery in Santa Monica. Many of her digital creations can be viewed on her Internet Web site, www.mildredjarrowriley.com.
In addition to her computer and other art, Riley spends her days making jewelry and pottery, and taking art classes at the Palos Verdes Art Center twice a week.
“That doesn’t leave much time for anything else,” she said.
And her plans for the future?
“To stay alive and do all the things I still want to do!”
“An Artist’s Perspective” will be on display through Jan. 20 at Belmont Village Rancho Palos Verdes, 5701 Crestridge Road. More information can be obtained by calling 310.377.9977.