Staff photo by Fritz Busch Lowell Liedman of New Ulm looks at some of his mother Jane’s World of Art exhibit that opened at The Grand’s 4 Pillars Gallery Friday. The exhibit continues through Nov. 12, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday.

NEW ULM — Creativity and variety marked Jane Liedman’s World of Art exhibit that opened at The Grand’s 4 PIllars Gallery Friday.

Sixty-five of her paintings are on display through Friday, Nov. 12.

Retired New Ulm High School Social Studies teacher Lowell Liedman said his mother continued to draw into her 90s. She died at 98 last year.

“We decided to do this (art exhibit) to honor her,” Liedman said. “She wasn’t serious about art until my brother and I got out of the house.”

Jane Liedman was never formally trained in art but wrote about how her career began as a child.

“I can remember sitting on our front porch in St. Paul, drawing houses across the street,” Jane Liedman wrote. “While living in Ames, Iowa, I was part of a small group who sold our paintings in a campus restaurant near Iowa State University. I also belonged to the Iowa Amateur Artists group.”

Years later, living in Arkansas, she joined a larger group of artisans of multimedia.

“We formed a ‘gallery’ by renovating an old dairy barn and filling it with 50 exhibitors,” Jane wrote. “Tourists came and we all profited.”

She painted in oil, acrylic, watercolor, and pastel. Liedman said she preferred watercolor because she found it challenging and surprising what a drop of paint does as it moves across wet paper.

Sometimes, her paintings involved no brushes, just a palette and paint. One of her creations was made with postage stamps.

Some of her other art work involved using old shingles from Lowell and Ingrid Liedman’s home.

“She would give them to people as gifts when she was invited into someone’s home,” Lowell said.

After three and one-half years of studying nursing at the University of Minnesota, the love of Jane’s life, Lyle, came home on leave from the South Pacific World War II theater. The couple married on New Year’s Eve, 1943.

An Army wife for 24 years, the couple lied in San Francisco, Germany, the Maryland side of the DC corridor and Governor’s Island in New York Harbor, among many other places. They traveled throughout the U.S. and Europe, especially enjoying national parks.

Jane and Lyle later lived in Ames, Iowa; Bella Vista, Ark, and New Ulm since the early 1990s.

Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

(Fritz Busch can be emailed at fbusch@nujournal.com).