This column focuses on what statisticians do when they are not being statisticians. If you would like to share your pastime with readers, please email Megan Murphy, Amstat News managing editor.

Kathleen Turczyn with her painting, “Lucy’s Grandmother,” oil on canvas

Who are you, and what is your statistics position?

My name is Kat Turczyn. I retired from the National Center for Health Statistics 11 years ago (Wow, does time fly!). And I thought I was old when I retired …

During the last half of my employment as a statistician, I worked with the Healthy People Initiative, a program that provides science-based, every-10-year national objectives for improving the health of all Americans. It is now in its third decade and has established benchmarks and monitored progress over time to do the following:

• Encourage collaborations across communities and sectors
• Empower individuals to make informed health decisions
• Measure the impact of public health disease-prevention activities

Throughout my career, I learned a considerable amount about many areas of the health promotion and disease prevention field and worked with numerous wonderful, dedicated people in a wide variety of health agencies and organizations—public and private. I found my work endlessly exciting and challenging, and gained a tremendous appreciation for the art and science of statistics.

Tell us about what you like to do for fun when you are not being a statistician.

I now have a painting studio (Kat’s Flat Art) and paint to my heart’s content in a small Western North Carolina mountain town.

What? A 180-degree leap from using my left brain to my right brain? I get asked this question a lot. It actually wasn’t so much of a leap as one might expect. Both disciplines require analytical skills. I went from analyzing data to analyzing color, value (light/shadow), texture, placement of shapes, and composition of two-dimensional art. I can spend a whole lot of time analyzing my next brush stroke, and then get it “wrong,” and then re-assess again and again. Other times, the paint just flows.

Painting has set me free to express myself in a way I never knew was possible. Probably because I haven’t been professionally trained (aside from a bunch of great painting workshops from very generous, talented painters), I paint in all sorts of styles, use lots of paint applicators (brushes, palette knives, rags, old credit cards, fingers, etc.), and choose many subjects. I don’t usually paint the same subject twice, because I find that my enthusiasm is diminished if the challenge of the original has passed, and this lack of enthusiasm shows in the final product.

What drew you to this hobby, and what keeps you interested?

After I retired in 2006, I knew I’d be painting. Over my statistical career, I’d been asked to design announcements and invitations to office celebrations (especially before personal computers) and to create temporary wall art for offices, hallways, conference rooms, and—occasionally—our auditorium.

I began by painting portraits in pastels, mainly as a personal challenge. After the 6th portrait, I started asking for compensation for the commissions I received. My husband, Mark, and I moved to the mountains of Western North Carolina in 2009; in 2010, I joined a group of painters who gathered on Wednesdays to not only paint, but share their vast painting knowledge. I saw a great opportunity in this Sandra Gates’ Wednesday Painters group, bought some oil paints and brushes, and jumped in. I haven’t looked back.

Little is off my to-paint list or my how-to-paint list. Almost everything is a challenge, and I rarely live up to my own standards. But this passion gets me up in the morning, and I am thrilled and infinitely grateful to be able to express my creativity in this way.

I was recently honored when The Laurel of Asheville magazine featured one of my winter paintings on the cover. You can never tell when something wonderful is going to fall into your lap. What a grand life!

Kat Turczyn gives her view of the South Toe River as fall sets in.