Carol Jessop has loved to draw and color since childhood. She got serious many years later, in the 1990s after she and her husband moved to Rolla.
“I started and ran a preschool at the Presbyterian Church,” she recalled. “One of my friends encouraged me to enter Art is Ageless® through Presbyterian Manor, so I did.”
Jessop mainly does watercolors but has also done a lot of sketches of places she’s been, as well as a few oil paintings.
“It encourages older people to pursue something that they might have loved but didn’t go ahead with,” she said of the Art is Ageless program.
As it turns out, art is in the family. Jessop’s son started out as an art instructor and wound up as Dean of the School of Art at East Central Oklahoma University. His son (her grandson) is a chef and has won several awards for his culinary creations (another form of art). He also has experience as a painter.
“My great-granddaughter is eight and she already is very interested in art,” said Jessop. “They are encouraging her to try different things.”
Jessop moved to Rolla Presbyterian Manor earlier this year and is enjoying her time so far. Her husband is in health care, and she said the continuum of care offered by the community is a big help.
She met her husband while they were both students at Kansas State University and they decided to get married while on their way to Oklahoma to see her parents.
“We got married in a Catholic hospital by a Lutheran minister. Frank was Presbyterian. I was a Methodist,” she laughed. “It all worked out.”
Please give a warm welcome to Carol Jessop!
