IT took retirement for Lilla Davis-Mays to discover her true calling. As a police officer in Florida, she'd spent years rendering criminal sketches, but it wasn't until she left the post in the spring of 2000 that she put her talents to use as an artist.

This week, she opens her first solo exhibit, The Spirit of Man, at the Masterworks Gallery in Hamilton.

"I'd always enjoyed painting and wanted to find something to do in my free time," said Mrs. Davis-Mays. "Butties was the first painting I did after I retired. It shows two boys - one black and one white - running from the beach into the water.

"I called it Butties both because the boys are naked, and also because of their ties together as friends. I sent a copy to President George Bush along with a note, because I knew he needed it. I knew he was in trouble and needed something to reflect on."

The President, said Mrs. Davis-Mays, sent her a personal response as a thank-you.

It seems natural, she added, to have her first solo exhibit in Bermuda. It was here that she first developed an interest in art 35 years ago.

"Although I have Bermudian family and friends, I was living here because I was married to a man in the Marine Corps," she said. "It's where I did my first painting, of my son Dennis in the water. He was six months old at the time but it was a depiction of how I thought he would look at the age of ten."

Mrs. Davis-Mays returned to the United States and joined the Police Department in St. Petersburg, Florida, initially as an officer and then as the department's criminal sketch artist.

"I didn't do much painting at all," she said. "When I first started it was just about putting colours together. I just did it the way I felt it. Since then, I have done some murals for churches in St. Petersburg and because of the work I'd done with the Police Department, I was asked by a Women of the Arts Programme in Florida, to exhibit some of my pieces."

One of the two she submitted, said Mrs. Davis-Mays, won Best In Show.

"I'm now retired but whenever anyone leaves the force, I'm called in to paint their portrait as a gift from the department."

Despite never having had any training as an artist, Mrs. Davis-Mays felt confident enough to contact Masterworks boss Tom Butterfield and talk about her work during her last visit to the island.

"I'm back and forth to Bermuda all the time because of family and friends," she said. "When I came here at Christmas last year, I brought six pictures with me to show to Deacon Jones of the First Church of God in Pembroke. He's a friend of friends here and he'd said he wanted to see my work, but he was very busy and didn't have the time."

An interest in seeing works by local artists, particularly those on exhibit at Masterworks, led her to its Front Street location, she said.

"I wanted to see what kind of art they had there but it was closed. Eventually, I telephoned and spoke with Tom Butterfield who saw my paintings and it went from there."

The artist said she titled the exhibit The Spirit of Man, "because of the numerous figures and dispositions of the individuals. The pictures show man in various moods - happy, sad, excited and so on."

In addition to producing her own art, Mrs. Davis-Mays spends her days since retirement teaching art to young children and senior citizens and works as a volunteer with Alzheimer patients.

"I have a couple of sites that I go out to for a couple of hours at a time," she said. "I give them a subject matter and some paint and ask them to produce their own impression of that model. If it's flowers, for example, I let them paint them how they see them. It lets them be somebody.

"I find in many cases, when they're at home, people tend to forget that they were once the wise person in the family. That person didn't die, they've just suffered a mind-altering experience. I see painting, for them, as a freedom of expression. And they enjoy it."

The Spirit of Man: Recent works by Lilla Davis-Mays is on exhibit at the Masterworks Gallery, 97 Front Street, through the end of August.