August 20, 2026 —Click on the link for full story A century of color: 100-year-old artist showcases a lifetime of work – Daily Hampshire Gazette
Over the last century, countless things have changed, but 100-year-old Betty Schaffer’s love of art remains untouched — and her earliest drawing from 1939 is on display to prove it.
Schaffer is the featured artist in “Betty & Friends,” an exhibition running through Saturday, Aug. 29, at The Elusie Gallery at Big Red Frame in Easthampton, showcasing decades of her watercolors, oil paintings and sketches alongside works by fellow members of the Lathrop Community.
“I’m glad I can still draw. … I’m still enjoying it. It’s a passion I have, and I have had, as long as I can remember. Even when I was a little child, I was drawing what I saw,” Schaffer said.
Schaffer, née Elizabeth Ann Laughner, was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1926 — the same year as Marilyn Monroe and Queen Elizabeth II. She and her family moved to Convoy, Ohio, when she was very young. When she was a teenager, they moved again, this time to Leetonia, Ohio, where she remembered iron furnaces turning the skies red.
As a child, Schaffer didn’t have any formal art education, but she loved to draw, and her parents were highly supportive of her interest. As a high school student, she created drawings for her school newspaper. At her father’s encouragement, she entered a poster contest with a drawing of a pig and its piglets — and won.
“Success is sweet,” she said in her artist statement.
After graduation, Schaffer continued to study art and art education at Wittenberg College in Springfield, Ohio, where she also minored in English and physical education. She married her high school sweetheart, Jim Stull, in 1948. They lived in Ohio for several years, where Schaffer taught art, physical education and English. In the early 1950s, she illustrated three music books for composer Rob Roy Peery.
“Because I had a big family — I have six children — I chose to be a wife and mother over creating a career in art. As they told me when I went to college, it’s awfully hard to make a living as an artist, so I just did art as I could. But you can imagine, after 100 years, I have quite a few pictures,” she said with a laugh.
In 1953, Schaffer and her husband moved to Philadelphia so he could attend medical school, but they returned to Ohio a few years later. After that, they moved to Connecticut, spending a year at what was then called the Hartford School of Missions. There, “we fell in love with New England,” Schaffer said.
In the summer of 1959, Schaffer, her husband, and their four children undertook a far bigger move than they’d ever made before: they sailed to Liberia so Jim, a doctor, could serve as a medical missionary for the Lutheran Church. They stayed there for seven years. Schaffer took a liking to the people and landscapes she encountered, and they became frequent subjects in her work.
“Betty & Friends” features several pieces with African subjects, including huts in a village, a woman gathering water from a pond and the son of a tribal chief.
The family returned to the U.S. with two additional children, spending four years in Ohio while Jim completed his surgical residency. While back in the country, Schaffer illustrated her first children’s book, “Five Cent, Five Cent.” They returned to Liberia for four more years in 1970, then came back to the U.S. in 1974 for good.
After a few years in Southampton, the family moved to Waukon, Iowa. Schaffer and her husband later divorced, and she moved back to the Valley in 1980.
Since then, Schaffer has married twice more and has continued to make art when possible — illustrating more children’s books, illustrating a plant catalog, painting, drawing and filling sketchbooks. She teaches watercolor classes to fellow Lathrop residents and is a member of the Easthampton Art Guild, where local artists meet for two hours each week to create work in a shared space.
“Sometimes, it’s hard to find the time to [make art] when you’re at home and all the housework is all around you, so you go off and you have two hours in which you can do an amazing amount of artwork, because that’s all you have to do,” she said.
Group member Lois Peirent said Schaffer is “an amazing person and is always positive and has energy and is always an inspiration to just do something,” adding that her optimistic worldview is especially needed today.
Jean-Pierre Pasche, owner of Big Red Frame, first met Schaffer in 2003. The two have shared a close relationship over the years, he said, and he has witnessed her navigate a number of life’s transitions, including marriage, divorce and the deaths of her husbands.
When Schaffer asked him if she could host a show at his gallery, there was no question, because he wanted to “honor her life,” he said. He also appreciated that she’d done work in Africa because he’d spent several years living on the continent as well.
“She has a great eye, and I think she transposes her vision onto paper really well,” Pasche said.
Pasche shared a photograph of a sketch that Schaffer had drawn of him during the show’s opening reception on Saturday, Aug. 1.
“To do this at 100 is quite impressive,” he said.
In fact, Schaffer carries around a sketchbook almost everywhere. “I sketch people’s faces, and sometimes I practice sketching without looking at the paper,” she said. “And my hand draws what my eyes are seeing.”
At a recent Easthampton Art Guild meeting at the Cliffview Manor Community Room, Schaffer’s latest sketches included an architectural column, various faces, cars and a bun on a plate.
“I’m hoping that I’ve shown a little bit of another world and another culture in my pictures, and maybe I’ve tried to encourage other people to draw and paint, too. They’ll say, ‘I can’t even draw a straight line.’ Well, you don’t have to draw a straight line,” she said with a laugh. “If you want to draw a straight line, you can use a ruler! But encouraging people to try and see if they like it and practice is important — just doing it and doing it. And that’s why this group is so good.”
Admission to the show is free. Big Red Frame is open 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Fridays, and 9 a.m. to noon Saturdays.
Carolyn BrownStaff Writer
Carolyn Brown is a features reporter/photographer at the Gazette. She is an alumna of Smith College and a native of Louisville, Kentucky, where she was a photographer, editor, and reporter for an alt-weekly…. More by Carolyn Brown