Love of art can be shared at last

In a brightly lit room next to the great room at the spacious Meadows of Dorchester long-term care home in Niagara Falls last Friday afternoon, dozens of eye catching landscape paintings were there for all the world to view — and purchase, should they desire them.

A great many of the lovely oil paintings featured lakes, rivers, streams, waves and waterfalls. They were all the handiwork of Udo Kupper, at age 89 a man as spry as they come.

That the paintings were there are all was thanks to serendipity.

Kupper could well have spent his life under the heel of communism, when the Soviet Union invaded his native Estonia in the last 1940s. That country remained in the iron fist of its invaders for nearly half a century, until the Iron Curtain finally fell in the 1990s.

Lucky for Kupper, he was able to escape — barely. Along with a few others, he hopped into a wobbly little rowboat towed by another boat, heading across the stormy Baltic Sea to refuge in Sweden.

The harrowing journey saw the rope break, and Kupper bailing out water as it splashed into the rickety craft. Even that close call wasn’t enough to dampen his love of water featured in his many paintings.

Once in the safety of Sweden, he met a young lady named Grace who’d also fled Estonia. The two married and are still together 64 years later.

They eventually made their way to Welland, where Udo launched a business hand painting large advertising billboards. But his love for art stretched into his spare time: for about half a century, he toiled away making his beloved oil paintings. And for half a century, most of them collected in his basement.

When the administrator of the Meadows home caught wind of his collection which had never been seen by the public, she arranged for the octogenarian to have his first-even solo exhibit. Within hours of the two-day exhibit, he’d already sold some of his paintings to admirers.

Colleen Tufts, the administrator, beamed as Kupper basked in the spotlight.

Thanks to a daring escape and the sharp eye of one woman, Kupper’s love of painting is something he can finally share with the world. No doubt, some of those paintings he sold — many done from memories of being a boy in Estonia — will be treasured by people in their new-found homes in living rooms in Niagara.