It wasn’t a midlife crisis, but Sharon Carr had reached a point in life, twenty-odd years ago, when her psychotherapy practice had become very busy and she was looking for outlets to take her mind off work.

She and a friend would visit local beaches and other quiet places, often bringing projects to work on. One day they came to the beach armed with watercolors and how-to-paint books checked out from the library, and for Carr something clicked.

“I just remember putting colors – thick, rich colors of paint – on my palette, and just feeling...goosebumps,” the Tacoma artist, featured this month at Gig Harbor’s Gallery Row, said. “That sounds pretty simple, but it just hooked me.”

Carr had never believed she could paint, and she’d tried numerous other arts and crafts in its place – sewing, macrame, pottery. But she was soon painting more and more.

“I was just sort of sneaking around painting, and I didn’t want anyone to know about it because I was having so much fun with it,” Carr said. “It was so refreshing for me.”

Little by little, she started to give up her practice and turned toward painting full time. Two decades later, she’s nearing 70 and said her art provides her with expression and focus.

“It’s just a fabulous thing to do in my autumn years. It keeps me happy and paying attention to the world around me,” Carr said.

Because she had never taken any art classes or scarcely even painted before her brush with inspiration on the beach, Carr has been studying for the past few years with William Turner, an artist based in Tacoma. She said Turner has led her toward a school of midcentury painters out of the Bay Area, such as Richard Diebenkorn and Biscoff, who have influenced her recent work tremendously.

“They were very expressive and emotional painters, who wanted to put feeling in their paintings rather than have them be literal interpretations,” Carr said.

It’s a style that Carr has emulated in her own work, which she said has become more and more expressionistic. She now mostly works with acrylics.

“All of a sudden my painting’s just gotten totally abstract,” she said.

The style also lends itself toward color, the element that first hooked Carr as a painter.

“What really thrills me is color, and trying to get color to vibrate on the canvas,” she said. “Right now

I’m just painting whatever comes to me. I’m trying to say something in my painting, with shape and color, that will capture the viewer and evoke a sense of imagination or emotion in them.”

Her classes with Turner are small, with three other students just once a week. Carr is also involved in the Gallery Row co-op, as the gallery is administered by its group of dues-paying member artists. Being with a group, whether in class or at the gallery, helps to facilitate her process, Carr said.

“I really feel like I could not paint in isolation,” she said. “It really helps to have a cohort of other artists who encourage and critique.”

Carr’s featured work this month is her series “Over the Edge,” abstract work created in vibrant reds and siennas. Her work will be on display at Gallery Row at the Gig Harbor Art Walk on Saturday, and

Carr will be at the gallery to discuss the series with guests. Her work can also be seen online.