As she held a delicate corsage of lavender and ballerina pink tea roses, local artist Helen Hungerford introduced her painting exhibit, Portraits Plus, at a reception in Kern Galleries. At 81 years old, Hungerford is transposing her experiences as a dancer and actress onto the canvas through 27 paintings depicting landscape, still life and figures.

"Dance and theater are a natural background for painting people," Hungerford said. "It is a way of incorporating my lost love. There are no criteria in art which might be confusing to the beginner, which means you have to be strong in your personal judgments. I try to give rhythm and flow to my paintings, which I have cultivated deliberately. I like the feeling that there is some dynamic movement in it."

Hungerford's exhibit represents four media types: pastel, watercolor, charcoal and oil. She describes the exhibit as disconnected subject matter; not particularly thematic. She said she would also like to lean more toward conceptual art, a style of painting she said is freer from objects and more out of her own spirit.

She said Dryad, a painting of a nude female molded from an ash grey forest, was the only piece that represented conceptual style.

Most of the exhibit contains portraits, such as Kusmiati, which features a woman in an Elizabethan dress, and Young Actress, which focuses on an actress wearing a flapper-type dress. Pomegranate is a still life Beached Tree and Regatta I are examples of landscape paintings.

Becky Miller, a desk attendant at Kern, said she really likes the exhibit. "It is an interesting exhibit; many of her portraits are from photos and the photos are here also. You can compare the photo with her interpretation of the portrait."

Hungerford's artistry grew out of her extensive background in dancing and movement. Born in Hoosick, N.Y., Hungerford entered the world of performing arts at the age of fifteen. A high school classmate taught Hungerford dancing for 25 cents an hour, and afterwards, Hungerford would practice in her farmhouse's basement.

"I started doing dance exercises in the cellar with the coal furnace, and every time I jumped all the ashes would come up and cover me," Hungerford said.

Her dance studies continued as she took physical education courses at Barnard College in 1929. Hungerford graduated with a bachelor's degree in language and the determination to be a dancer, she said.

Although the Depression continued to dampen the country when she graduated, Hungerford was able to obtain housing over an old theater on 59th Street in return for answering the telephone and scrubbing the studio floor.

A teacher from Barnard later gave her a check for $85, saying she could learn to dance on the studio floor instead of scrubbing it. Hungerford used the money to study modern dance with Doris Humphrey, one of the pioneers of the modern dance movement.

"After no more than a few swipes, I found myself in the understudy group," Hungerford said.

Humphrey started Hungerford in Broadway musicals. Hungerford danced in such musicals as Lysistrata, Americana, and Candide but soon tired of touring with the Humphrey Dance Company.

"I began to feel the limitations of dance," Hungerford said. "I felt I was really aiming to be an actress."

For the next five years, Hungerford lived in Jackson Heights, N.Y., and worked as display manager for Thom McAn shoe stores and as fashion director for James McCreery department stores. She describes her work experience as unsatisfying.

"I felt like I had abandoned my true self," she said.

In 1938, she married and moved to Washington D.C., where she was accepted at the Corcoran Gallery School of Art. There, she first studied painting.

"The more I drew, the more I wanted to draw," Hungerford said.

After a five year hiatus from the arts to raise her adopted daughter, Gale, Hungerford and her husband eventually moved back to New York, where Hungerford started acting and directing at the Westchester Playhouse in Mount Kisco.

The Hungerfords transferred to State College in 1962. Hungerford began teaching dance in the University's physical education department while her husband taught in the speech communications department.

Two years later she obtained her master's degree in theater arts from the University. She then taught theater and acted in local plays.

Lately, Hungerford has turned her artistic energy toward painting. She paints from her cellar, which doubles as her dance studio.

"I'm dancing in the cellar again," Hungerford said.

The "Portraits Plus" exhibit will run in Kern Gallery until January 30.