When Mildred Jarrett started her studies at Watkins College of Art and Design (or, as it was then known, Watkins Institute), she was considered too young to be in figure studies classes with nude models. When she graduated with her Associates Degree in Fine Art in 2001, she was a half-century older than her classmates.

The college considers Jarrett its oldest alumni artist, and this month they’re featuring her work in the Watkins Art Gallery during the First Saturday Art Crawl.

In the 52 years between her stints as a Watkins student, Jarrett sold encyclopedias door-to-door to pay for art supplies, which she parlayed into a career in corporate sales and motivational speaking that took her around the world.

Jarrett says that experience can be seen in her expressionist paintings. “If I can travel over the jungles of Africa in an old DC-3, aboard a British submarine in Nova Scotia, be questioned by the police in China, slide around a mountain in New Zealand, drive in New York City without directions… I can attack this canvas!”

Attack may be the right word for Jarrett’s approach to making art. She doesn’t just paint on large-scale canvases — she sands, glazes and scrapes the surface to alter the texture. But don’t look for a specific meaning or narrative in the finished product. Jarrett has said her largely abstract body of work has “no subject matter except emotional feelings.”

Jarrett’s success as a salesperson has continued into the art world as well. She’s sold paintings to corporate offices around the Midstate as well as to private collectors, and one of her pieces is currently hanging in Senator Bob Corker’s Washington D.C. office.