It's his talent for painting with watercolors that he's been sharing by teaching a class at the Courtyards of Waverly Woods East, an over-55 community where he and his wife reside.

"I volunteered to teach after people saw my paintings and said, 'I'd like to learn to do that,' " he explained. "So I thought we'd have a go at it and get together and it sort of worked out. Currently Lord's watercolor paintings and those of his students are being exhibited at The Classic Cup, a cafe in the Waverly Woods shopping center in Woodstock.

"The biggest problem with watercolor is not being able to fiddle with it. But I was never able to get on with oils," he confessed. "Water takes on happy accidents and you often have no control over what happens. It's exciting." Lord's speech is pleasantly peppered with British phrasing as he's only resided in America for three years. He had no art lessons in his home country of England, but he did have a watercolorist in the family.

"My uncle was an artist and did water color paints, he was my inspiration. He worked for Rolls-Royce as a draftsman and did art on car parts," said Lord. "Oddly, I really didn't start to paint until after my uncle died. I wish I had done it when he was alive, he could have taught me a lot."

Lord never liked art in school. He was concentrating on science as a physicist at the University of Salford in Manchester, England, where he retired as the Chair of Physics and the head of the School of Science. During his career he conducted research and taught both graduate and undergraduate students. His research concentrated on magnetostriction, the study of how material changes shape when magnetized. He began painting later in life, about 20 years ago.

"It was a good career and I got to travel. I had a short sabbatical to University of Maryland and I also worked with the navy lab," he said.

Lord retired four years ago, but away from the laboratory there was still a magnet in his life; his grandchildren. It was the grandkids that pulled the couple to America to live. Their daughter's lived in Columbia for 18 years and has two children. Lord sees some art talent in his grandchildren, but says they are too much occupied with the host of other activities to concentrate on art at the moment.

"We miss the people in England and we still have one son there, that's why we try to get back to visit, but we've made some fabulous friends here and the people were very welcoming. It was an easy change," said Lord.

Though he rarely does plein air (in the open air) paintings, he did paint a few in the Lake District in northwest England. Here in Maryland, he plans on getting his students into some outdoor painting also, perhaps at Waverly Mansion or the state park. There are six students in his class which meets on Monday evenings.

Atoms in motion

Lord has been teaching at the Waverly Woods complex for two years and Gary Weiler, one of the members of his class, said that Lord has helped the students achieve marked improvement in their work. Weiler, who is color blind, is especially happy with his own artistic work.

"I told Don this before I started, but he said we'd figure it out," said Weiler. And they did. Lord helped him mix his colors and encouraged Weiler and the class to move the brush freely around the paper and to not be intimidated.

"Don's an extremely accomplished artist himself and a talented and gifted teacher," said Weiler. "I can't do his British accent, but he'd tell us not to worry about our work and would say, ‘If it looks like 'ribbish' we'll get rid of it!’ He encourages all of us and makes it fun.”

"The students are surprised at what they can accomplish and they enjoy it. And I enjoy seeing that everyone has improved dramatically," said Lord. "We are grateful to Phyllis and Pete for letting us display our paintings in The Classic Cup."

Though he hasn't exhibited his own work anywhere but the cafe, he did submit paintings to the Baltimore Watercolor Society in the spring and was awarded "good points", and has been asked to submit his work again in the fall. Lord enjoys doing landscapes, working with his favorite colors of ultra-marine blue and light red, and painting rivers, water, and reflections, which are at once both peaceful and exciting to him.

Although Lord likes the immediacy of watercolor, with all those atoms in motion, it has its negatives. Though it looks simple, watercolor has particular nuances that must be addressed. So, before those watery, ethereal compositions can come to life, just as in the research lab, there must be planning.

"With the wet canvas water is moving and things are happening all the time everywhere. It can be intimidating and challenging. It's a pain in a sense, it dries quickly and if you make an error it's difficult to get rid of," he said. "With watercolor you have to plan carefully. You're moving a bead of water, it's an active game."

As he relishes tutoring others in technique and honing his own skills in the art of making water and paint behave, he finds some similarities in both physics and painting.

"In research, as with painting, it's exciting when something works."