Busy OB/GYN remembers to balance career with fun
Dr. Elizabeth Mann is a self-proclaimed adrenaline junkie.
As if her day job — bringing babies into the world — weren’t adventurous enough, Mann spends her spare time on either her Harley-Davidson Springer Softail or a custom bike her husband built for her.
“It’s partly my adven- turesome spirit, I guess,” said Mann, a physician with Memphis Obstetrical and Gynecological Association. “I had a cousin who was a rider, and he and his wife encouraged me to get a motorcycle. Their encouragement led to me buying a cycle and taking the class to learn to ride. That’s been 10 to 12 years ago, and I’ve never slowed down since.”
In fact, Mann has moved at a fast pace since an early age. She was in high school when she decided she wanted to become a doctor. At the time, she had a different kind of medicine in mind.
“I was interested in veterinary medicine,” said Mann, who grew up in Brownsville, Tenn. “That was more my exposure at that age.”
She tried to get a job with a local veterinar- Riding motorcycles is one way Dr. Elizabeth Mann unwinds from her busy medical career delivering babies.
entered a piece in a contest at Southland Mall, won honorable mention and a place in the competition at the Mid-South Fair, where he took another honorable mention. Still, his commitment to watercolor painting remained low-key until the terrible events of Sept. 11, 2001.
“That caused me to stand back and take a look at my time and decide that I needed to get serious and dedicated,” said Eoff.
He sought the tutelage of well-known watercolor artist Fred Rawlinson, who said, “I think I can help you.” One of Rawlinson’s first observations was, “You know, you’re painting with colored water, not watercolor.”
“That changed everything,” Eoff said. “By using less water, my colors became more intense. Fred taught me so much, so many tricks, and he was so nurturing. He’d find something good in the worst painting, something you could build on.”
Eoff, 64, and his wife, Bobbie, live in Naples, Fla., but keep a home on Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina. They began traveling there, to Avery County, in 2006 and eventually bought a place. “I had to get away,” said Eoff, “get away from growing up and living in Memphis and working there all my life.” He left The New York Times Broadcasting Group in 2007 and took a job at the University of Memphis as vice president for communications, public relations and marketing, retiring at the end of 2011. He does not, he said, come back to Memphis often.
The exhibition at ANF Architects, his fourth or fifth in the gallery space, has a Western theme and marks somewhat of a departure for the artist, who has largely concentrated on landscape, forests, rivers and the like. Now, he said, “I’m painting with more detail. My goal this summer is to paint more people. The people up there” — on Grandfather Mountain — “have such wonderful faces. They lead a pretty hardscrabble life. Nothing but rocks up there, but they grow tomatoes, watermelons and whole mountainsides of lilies.”