Mabel Freda Williams has opened her own art gallery on Parkway Avenue in Ewing. (Staff photo by Diccon Hyatt.)

An eye doctor’s office may not the be the first place one would think to find an art gallery, but in a way, it makes sense. At least it did to Ewing optometrist Susan Bell, who is devoting a wing of her Parkway Avenue building to a small but growing art colony called ArtTown.

The first visual artist to take residence there is Mabel Freda Williams, a Ewing resident, who opened Freda’s gallery in September.

Williams’ gallery is filled with paintings that are untutored and deeply personal, inspired by events in the painter’s life. Few things were more inspirational to Freda, who has worked for the state for 25 years as an equal employment and affirmative action officer, than the 2008 election of President Barack Obama.

Greeting visitors is a painting of trees in autumn, arrayed to reveal a glowing light in the distance. That painting was a work created in a moment of pure joy for Williams when Obama was elected.

“I thought when I completed that painting that I could see the president coming up from the light to save this country,” she said.

Williams has no formal training in art, though she has been painting since age 9. Before she worked at the state, she was a human resources officer for U.S. Steel. All along though, she has found artistic release as a painter. And as she approaches retirement, Williams is beginning a second career as an artist.

Williams never imagined selling one of her paintings until 35 years ago. It was football–a hatred of football, specifically–that launched Williams’ career as a public artist.

“Years ago, my husband was a football fanatic,” she recalled. “I mean, football was his second love, I think. So every weekend, I knew where he would be. I used to get so annoyed because he was completely absorbed in football games … I couldn’t get his attention, so I went downstairs and started painting. I couldn’t stand football, so I did this scene that was like a mass of football players chasing this silly ball.”

She had the painting framed. But as it turned out, her husband liked it, and took it to work to hang in his office. One of his co-workers liked it and offered her $100. Williams had sold her first painting, not to be her last.

Freda’s displays works Williams has done since 2000, and the walls are lined with her oil paintings, some of them abstract, some figurative. All are works of passion for Williams.

Though the gallery only has weekend hours now, since Williams works full time, she plans to open it for more hours when she retires.

“I’m excited to really live my passion, which is to paint and to enjoy art,” she said.

She first displayed her work in 2008 at the Mercer County Public Library Lawrence Branch and then the next year at the Ewing branch. The shows boosted her confidence and convinced her to follow the dream of opening an art gallery of her own.

Williams, who has one daughter, said she is looking forward to turning her self-expression into a second career.

Launching into the unknown has been a theme through Freda’s life, and one of the paintings in the gallery speaks to that impulse. The painting is called Parachute Hill. It is a view down a leafy street, with a red brick schoolhouse at the end.

Williams painted this scene from her memories of the small North Carolina town where she grew up.

“This is the school at the end of the road and what I thought at the time was a hill,” she said. “My brother-in-law had served in WWII and he had given me a present: a real parachute. And my family tells me I used to strap that parachute on, and go to the top of this hill and run down thinking that the parachute would open and I’d start flying.”

Only now does Williams feel like she’s finally taken off.