The Kit Clark Senior Center in Fields Corner has long been a vital source of support and creativity for seniors in and around the Dorchester area. Last Wednesday, the Dorchester Ave. facility hosted its third annual Senior Art Show to put their work on full display.

Kit Clark, which is managed by Bay Cove Human Services, has been running the art program for its seniors for over fifteen years.

Case Manager Lan Chi Pham explained at length the abundant services that the staff provides for its seniors: Everything from health services — both physical and mental to housing issues— to language translation

Mark Belluardo-Crosby, vice president of Senior Services for Bay Cove Human Services, gave a warm welcome to the crowd, adding “what better thing to celebrate than art because without art where would we be, as a culture and how we enjoy our lives by the art that is created around us.”

Some of the most vivid and beautiful pieces on display were created by the hands of Mary MacLean, who in her mid 80s, is a gifted artist and a bit of a late bloomer. She tells of the disappointment she felt when her daughter, who attended Dorchester High, was discouraged by her teachers at the time from pursuing the arts even though she was a gifted painter. Instead her teachers wanted her to pursue a more practical field of work.

“I came to the Kit Clark house in the 1980s and we had an instructor, his name was James Hobin. He showed me what to do, and from that day on I started with chalks, than watercolors and acrylics. I am not an artist. I just like what I see and what I see I want to put on the paper.”

Mary is modest to say the least. Her artwork captures the essence of whatever it is she is seeing, and once her brush hits the canvass, be prepared for a masterpiece.

Both Gregory Laplanche and Sara Hamlen work as art instructors at Kit Clark. Laplanche works closely with the seniors of Haitian descent, as he himself is a native of Haiti. He explained the passion and depth of his elderly students especially in the wake of the earthquake of 2010 in his homeland of Haiti which reportedly killed over 316,000 and injured and displaced over a million people.

He told of his “obligation to his students and the people of Haiti, to be a voice for them, an advocate for them.”

Sara Hamlen has been an art instructor for the past two years and teaches once a week at the Kit Clark Senior Center.

“We have a grant so we have art for anyone who wants to come and we provide all the materials. We want to get them over their shyness and start painting,” says Hamlen. “[Retired Boston Public School teacher] Doris Neil is one of our oldest and most continuous painters she’s been painting since she retired back when she was 65. She is now in her 80s.”