By SUSAN BERG

Managing editor

By day, Katherine DeFilippis manages The Lumberyard in Hillsboro.

By night, she can transport herself to a flower garden, surrounded by beautiful irises or a creek bank with a rowboat in the water and a cottage up the hill with a paintbrush, paints, and palettes.

“It’s the only thing I can do that makes my mind go blank,” DeFilippis said.

After a busy day at work and the rigors of everyday living, she appreciates being able to leave all of her cares, concerns, and worries behind.

DeFilippis claims she doesn’t have any exceptional artistic talents.

“I can’t draw a lick,” she said, “but everybody has the ability. We just have to know how to look at things.”

As an artist, DeFilippis looks at the contrasting colors of the subject she is going to paint. By adding a light color under a person’s eye, it can make the painting more human like. Shading also adds dimension to still life.

DeFilippis comes by her talent quite honestly because her mother was an artist.

“She always wanted me to try,” she said of her mother, but she didn’t until 2001 and hasn’t wanted to stop since.

When she finds a subject to paint, DeFilippis might make a rough sketch.

“When I start, I just go,” she said with a smile.

DeFilippis is sharing her love of painting by teaching classes Tuesday evenings in Hillsboro.

She also has been commissioned to paint specific subjects or to use unusual mediums.

“One customer had me use her father’s ashes in a painting,” DeFilippis said, which turned out well.

Despite the medium or the subject, DeFilippis loves her hobby and loves watching other people enjoy it.

“I love the smell of paint,” she said. “I could paint all of the time.”