Janet Percy never expected that retirement would give her a chance to reinvent herself.

She was a popular artist, known for her watercolours and drawings of plants and flowers. And then in 2000, the year before she retired from her job in human resources at a reinsurance company, she discovered something else.

“I took a workshop learning to do papier-mâché at the [Bermuda] Arts Centre at Dockyard,” she said. “Most people learn papier mâché in school, but I never did. I was getting ready to retire and had a young grandson who was very interested in fish. We would putter about and catch fish with nets. I made him a cow polly and took it to work to show everybody and have been making them ever since. It was very rough, very crude, but I was so pleased with it. After several years of very detailed work with watercolours, it was wonderfully liberating to actually build something with my hands, and I have never looked back, having made more than 200 fish to date. It is a very labour-intensive process, and each piece is made entirely by hand without the use of moulds.”

She held her first exhibit of papier-mâché marine sculptures two years later.

The precious pieces of art are completely handmade. The 79-year-old painstakingly crafts each one: a 10in cow polly takes about 25 hours to make; 28in groupers take anywhere between 35 and 45 hours.

Mrs Percy was born in Bermuda to Ernest and “Bubbles” Gauntlett, on September 1, 1935. She had three siblings — Betty, Judith and Ted. Art classes she took as a child helped cultivate her interest and eventually led to a teaching position.

“I was educated at the Bermuda High School for Girls and graduated with the class of 1952, having passed the Cambridge School Certificate with honours with distinction in art,” she said. “While I was a student at BHS, Mrs Frances Zuill, a member of staff, encouraged me to develop my artistic talents and took me to meet her relatives, the Tucker sisters, who were successful artists of the time.

“About 1960 I returned to BHS as [principal Marjorie] Hallett’s secretary, and also became a substitute art teacher to fill in for a teacher who had left. I was not a trained teacher, but I held this position for about five years.”

Mrs Percy married in the late 1950s. The couple divorced but before that had a daughter, Sonja. A 1963 marriage also ended in divorce but produced two sons, Robert and Andrew.

Her love of art was a constant.

The “keen gardener” began experimenting with watercolours and, for obvious reasons, decided to focus on plants and flowers.

“I did not receive a formal education in art in those early years, and taught myself how to use watercolours and pastels,” she said. “I also tried my hand at pen and ink drawing, and was commissioned to illustrate Sandra Rouja’s book of short stories called The St George’s Dream. I won a citation in the commercial art category for these illustrations, and also a citation in the fine arts category for my watercolour titled Ralph’s Garden. I also illustrated several field guides for the Aquarium with pen and ink drawings.”

Mrs Percy held her first exhibit in 1981 at the late Jay Bluck’s gallery in St George’s, Heritage House.

“Jay Bluck and Bruce and Sue Stuart were very encouraging and supportive of my work. Sue was a very talented framer, and was very creative with the framing of my work. As my work progressed, I began to exhibit in several of the galleries, including [the late] Susan Curtis’s Windjammer on the corner of King and Reid Streets, Heritage House, the [Bermuda] Arts Centre at Dockyard and Bermuda Society of Arts. In 1984, Sheilagh Head, Vaughan and Amy Evans and Elmer Midgett and I formed a group called Growing, and had several exhibitions together at City Hall under that name.”

In 2002, she held the first solo exhibit of her marine sculptures. Her mother came up with the idea to call it Reef Roamers; Mrs Percy returned to BSoA the following year, with Reef Roamers II.

“In 2005 I was invited to submit a design for a postage stamp to be used in the third edition of the Bermuda Philatelic Bureau’s Made in Bermuda commemorative stamp series. A photograph of my papier-mâché sculpture of a queen angelfish with tube sponges, owned by a collector in California, was chosen for this set of four stamps. My stamp was a 70 cent stamp, and it gave me great pleasure to send out my overseas Christmas cards that year with my own stamp on them.

“During the past five years I have attended a series of workshops by well-known botanical artist Margaret Best, to learn coloured pencil technique and to improve my water- colour skills. I have shown my plant portraits in many exhibitions, and in 2012 received recognition for design and composition in the Charman Prize competition with my coloured pencil painting Bermuda Onions.”

She’s preparing to celebrate her 80th birthday next month with a visit to her daughter in California and another exhibition of her work.

“[I’ve recently] been working on commission, rarely having more than four pieces available at any one time,” she said. “I will be celebrating a milestone birthday soon, and will be marking that special occasion with my third solo exhibition, Reef Roamers III at BSoA in City Hall, opening on October 23. I will be showing 30 new pieces of work, and some favourite pieces from private collections.”