Helen Brainerd never left home without her paints.
Brainerd, who painted everything from lobsters and landscapes to her grandchildren’s shoes, died March 18 at a Denver hospice. Brainerd, who was 77, had fought a lengthy battle with cancer, said her son, Steve Brainerd.
A memorial service will take place at 3 p.m. Thursday at Park Hill United Methodist Church, 5209 Montview Blvd.
Brainerd did watercolors at her studio and in the mountains, the Southwest, California, Cape Cod and on trips to Canada and Europe.
The work included landscapes, seascapes, strangers she’d spot in out-of-the-way places and newly picked onions. Once, she took her grandchildren’s shoes, threw them on the floor and painted them where they lay: pink cowboy boots, yellow high-tops and sneakers, said her son.
Brainerd often went on short trips to paint outside. “She loved rushing streams. We’d scramble over rocks and logs” to get just the right angle, said her friend and former student Pat Clarke.
“Helen was an excellent painter who had a good sense of composition, design and color,” Clarke said.
Brainerd often volunteered her time at local schools teaching classes.
Helen Brainerd sold her work for much less than she could have gotten for it, Steve Brainerd said, because she believed “a piece of art should be affordable to anyone who truly enjoys it.”
Prices usually ranged from under $100 to $500.
“She sold more than 1,000 paintings,” said her daughter Susan Brainerd of Edwards. “She was never without her art supplies.”
Helen S. Bebb was born on July 9, 1931, in Muskogee, Okla., and graduated from high school there. She began drawing and painting as a child and earned an art degree at Wellesley College. She did graduate studies at the University of Oklahoma and taught school in Dallas and at Kent Denver School. She married Frank J. Brainerd on Oct. 25, 1958.
In addition to him, her son and daughter, she is survived by another daughter, Sally Brainerd of Edwards; her sister, Sally Fry of Houston; and four grandchildren.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
