Your Incredible Neighbors: Painting, writing, photography keep B&B couple busy

In keeping with their multitude of creative pursuits, Colorado innkeepers and Green Valley residents Paul and Becky McCreary have kept busy this winter painting, writing, photographing the desert landscape, creating photo cards for sale and teaching classes for Green Valley Recreation.

The courtyard of their home is enhanced with Paul’s lively and colorful artwork. A primary-color cactus provides a strong burst of color on the inside of the front gate, three rectangular desert scenes add color to the patio walls and a wood-slat table adds color from a different vantage point.

Working with quick-drying acrylics in mainly primary colors, Paul paints vivid desert scenes on canvas, gates, boards and tables bringing jolts of brilliant color to the neutral desert landscape.

Describing his approach to his art, he said, “My art is very impulsive and spurty… I’ll do some, then nothing for a month.”

As winter visitors the McCreary’s close up their turn-of-the-century bed and breakfast in the San Juan Mountains of Ouray, Colo. to enjoy Green Valley’s easier winters. Describing Ouray’s winter landscape Becky said, “It’s a winter paradise for winter people; there’s an ice climbing festival every January.” Summer, she said, is filled with delightful degree days in the low to mid 70s.

Painting, poetry and photography

As an artist who prefers vivid colors Paul has made prints of his eye-catching paintings and sells them as note cards. Locally they’re available at Meredith’s Hallmark, Second Look Books and The Book Shop; in Tubac at Tortuga Books and Paws Here and in Tucson at Antigone Books on Fourth Avenue.

Primarily a writer, Becky also has her artistic side. She enjoys capturing candid shots with the camera and two of her framed photos show her shutter skill. One was taken at a flamenco-type dance festival in Tumacacori in December; it shows five high school dancers, each in a different-colored full and long skirt captured at the perfect moment in their dance. The other is a simple country landscape of a bicycle leaning against a summer cottage adorned with a few flowers.

As part of her artistic flair she plans to teach a class about paper mache Father Christmas figures for GVR in November.

A former reporter with the Palladium Item newspaper in Indiana, Becky also worked for Ford Motor Co. where she wrote company newsletters and was at the helm of their written communications. Now she enjoys a freer style of writing poetry and short stories.

Intrigued and inspired by a big, scary house in Indiana that has fascinated her since childhood she’s writing a non-fiction story about two sisters who lived there, Rose and Blanche Dougan. “Rose piloted a plane… she was a George Sands-type character,” Becky said.

One of her poems, “A Kind-Hearted Woman Lives Here” won first prize at the Mesa State College 2005 Writer’s Festival in Grand Junction, Colorado.

I pressed my summer-tanned cheek

against the white porch pillar,

flaking paint rough on my face.

I shyly peeked

at the hobo man sitting in my daddy’s chair.

He smiled and said, “thank you”

when Mama gave him

meat loaf, mashed potatoes, brown bread,

that was all he said….

Past and present

An artist who taught drawing for GVR this past winter and plans to teach acrylic painting in the fall, Paul grew up on a farm near Detroit. As a special ed teacher his creative side is fully emerging now that he has the freedom of time. Of his teaching career, he said, “Teaching special ed took all of my energy; it was draining.”

Married to each other only ten years, seven years ago the McCreary’s bought the bed and breakfast in Colorado where they enjoy being host to guests from all over the world in spring, summer and fall.

Asked what they love about running a B&B, Paul said, “People are always on their best behavior. Everyone has a story; we get involved without being intrusive… people are from all over.”

They have hosted writer’s retreats, and as writers themselves, in 2006 spent a month in the walled city of Carcassonne, France at a writer’s retreat. “It was extraordinary to be there… the French are proud of their country, their heritage, their homes and how they look,” Becky said.

Enjoying the ideal arrangement of winter in Green Valley and three seasons as innkeepers in Colorado, Becky said, “This is playtime... we love our summers in Ouray, it’s perfect weather… absolute heaven with low humidity.”

Ellen Sussman is a freelance writer for the Green Valley News.