ASHLAND — Linda Chorpening’s head bobs to the beat of Bruce Hornsby’s “The Way It Is” on a cloudy June day. Her feet tap the floor. Her eyes intently study the work unfolding before her.
There are two square-shaped canvases sitting next to each other, each painted a matte black. So far, she’s painted white and green circles using a sponge-tipped brush and empty tape rolls.
“It’s something,” she says about the painting she started, chuckling.
The tips of her fingers are wet with paint. She wears an apron. Her brows furrow, and then she squeezes an orange acrylic paint tube onto her styrofoam plate that she’s using as a palette.
This is Kitchen Table art, as Chorpening calls it. She means it literally.
The other end of the table belongs to her husband, John, a retired Ashland firefighter. it features a half-full Tic Tac box. Prescription meds. A folded newspaper. Bills.
The Chorpenings married 54 years ago. They have lived in their Overlook Drive house since 1976. They raised two children, both of which have long since moved out and away.
Linda always loved painting. But she didn’t have much free time when the kids still lived at the house. So when they moved out, and when her husband retired, she started doing it again.
But now, their house is filled with the paintings, so the couple decided to try and sell some of them.
So that’s what he does. She paints — he transports the artwork to local events and stores to make room for more paintings and hopefully earn a few bucks. But mostly it’s to support his wife.
“She stayed home with the kids,” John Chorpening says. “So she supported me, why not support her?”
Today, her artwork can be found at the Christ United Methodist Church Farmers’ Market, the Ashland Public Library, the BalloonFest and other Ashland-area locations.
But it’s not about the money, the couple said. She learned recently that one of her paintings of a pig still hangs in someone’s house. She sold it around six years ago.
“It feels good,” she says, adding that some people have fought over her artwork. “It’s about just spreading joy and color. It’s just what we do.”
She sits back in her wooden chair, crosses her arms and looks at the painting. It looks like an abstract arrangement of orbs in deep space.
Hornsby sings “That’s just the way it is, some things’ll never change. That’s just the way it is.”
A smile spreads across Chorpening’s lips and she dips her brush in for more.