Artist, 88, finishes year of pandemic ‘daily doodles’
Westmoreland, N.H. — Much like the round clock faces, gears and planets that often populate his artwork, Robert Seaman has come full circle.
Seaman, 88, has been drawing since he was a boy, and at age 60, left a real estate career to pursue his hobby professionally. But it took the coronavirus pandemic to fully return him to his passion.
“As a kid, I kept lurching between being a loner and being an extrovert,” he said. “But in my introvert phase, I would love to go up to my room where I had a drawing table kind of desk and I’d spend hours up there drawing pictures. That’s what I’m doing now.”
Tuesday marked one year since Seaman started churning out “daily doodles” from his small, one-room apartment at the Maplewood Assisted Living facility in Westmoreland, N.H. He spends about six hours a day working on his intricate, fanciful illustrations, starting with pencil sketches and finishing with ink, colored pencil and watercolor.
“After a long life, I’m back doing what I did when I was 11 years old,” he said. “And it’s great, I love it. I’m so lucky that I can do this.”
Seaman moved in to Maplewood just two weeks before the pandemic restrictions cut residents off from the outside world. For many months, they couldn’t leave their rooms. It was only last week that they were allowed to interact in hallways and other common areas without masks.
“The first thought I had was to just do some kind of dark stuff that reflected the nature of the confinement that we were experiencing and the difficulties that were created by this pandemic,” he said. “Then it just started to grow, and I thought it would be interesting to do one a day.”
He started sending the doodles to his daughter, Robin Hayes, and other friends and family. Hayes then shared them on Facebook, and as interest grew, began offering the originals and prints for sale on Etsy.com, with half the proceeds going to charities, including a COVID-19 relief fund, a homeless shelter and an organization that helps refugees.