L Jean Art Gallery showing now through June 16 in Elms Retirement Village

Many paintings in the L Jean portfolio include portraits of children highlighting their expressions. (Larissa Beriswill – The Morning Journal)

The L Jean Art Gallery, with a collaboration with Main Street Wellington and other organizations, is featured in Elms Retirement Village, 136 S. Main St. in Wellington, now through June 16, showcasing paintings for purchase.

The gallery, which lines the walls of the first and second floor hallways, is a small portion of over 400 paintings in L Jean’s, also known as Linda Hanks’ collection, according to Main Street Wellington.

The paintings are originals and depict horses and other animals, landscapes and portraits, Hanks said.

Some have a touch of southwest art influence, she said.

“We were just really taken by her art and her story, and we thought she would be a great person to have at our first gallery,” said Jenny Arntz, executive director of Main Street Wellington. “Linda’s work is exquisite; she creates portraits of southwestern culture, animals, nature and more.”

“We knew we wanted to feature her in a gallery show,” said Shannon Meeks, president of the Main Street Wellington Board of Directors.

While much of her artwork has a focus on nature and landscapes, Hanks said her greatest joy came from painting child expressions in day-to-day life and that she can take inspiration from every day situations, like sitting in the waiting room of a doctor’s office.

“My love was always trying to capture expressions that I saw in children,” she said. “I just loved trying to do portraits, character studies of children.”

The art gallery is a collaboration with organizations including Wellington Arts, Wellington Music, Lorain County Office on Aging, Sprenger Health Care Systems and Lorain County Community College, according to Arntz.

Hanks said her granddaughter Brittany Knight, who is the coordinator for the Lorain County Office on Aging Southern Satellite, has helped her mange her art collection and public relations since moving from Texas a year ago.

Knight also suggested that a portion of the proceeds be donated back to the Office on Aging, to which Hanks said 20% of the sales will go to the organization.

According to Hanks, she got her start painting as a young girl under the guidance of her mother, Ruth Bevington, who taught her basic color theory among many other lessons, and eventually went through art school as a young adult where the pseudonym “L Jean” was born.

“L Jean” is the name Hanks said she came up with after a professor told her class, full of women, that art was a “man’s world,” and each of their signatures had to be something that could be mistaken for a man’s work.

“That’s how different it was, and all of us girls were like, wow, and I didn’t want to make up a name, which some of the girls actually did,” Hanks said.

“We are not only inspired by L Jean’s body of work, but from her stories of being a young female artist in the 1960s until now,” Arntz said.

For more information on the gallery, visit mainstreetwellington.org.