NASHUA – Pianist Deanna Butler and artist Loretta Hubley are trying to figure out when the two first met.

“Four years?” Butler said.

“Oh no, it hasn’t been four years,” Hubley answered.

Butler explained that Hubley came to her birthday party and as she is 83 now, it “has to be at least four years.”

“That means my piano playing is really bad if we’ve been at this for four years,” Hubley joked.

While the ladies playfully squabble over the exact timing of their meeting one another, they both agree that they’ve become the best of friends.

Now Butler, who has been playing piano since she was five-years-old and a Hubley, a visual artist, are teaching each other their craft.

Typically each Friday, the two get together and play and paint.

“She’ll come in and get herself situated,” Butler said. “And I’ll play a couple of tunes and then Loretta will sit down and we go over her lesson.”

With that, Butler begins playing a 1920’s jazz piece.

“I do play out occasionally,” Butler said, “or at least when you could play out somewhere. I had raised five children and during that time, I didn’t play too much. But I directed a church choir for 20 years.”

Hubley, who has taught art at places like the University of Michigan, said that Butler and she began working with watercolors and now are working on composition.

“Now, we’re doing encaustic, which is a form of painting with wax,” Hubley said. “And that can be frustrating, because the wax doesn’t always do what you want it to do.”

Butler said Hubley invited her to go to a workshop on encaustic, which got the creative ball rolling.

“I’ve kind of fallen in love with it,” Butler said.

It’s Hubley’s turn at the piano, where she plays some melodies and chords, often by memory.

“You have to understand that people who have as little ability as I have don’t have a favorite piece to play,” Hubley said with a laugh. “I wanted to take piano lessons when I was a kid, but my mother wouldn’t let me have them. She said because my hands were too small.”

Hubley’s children are all artistic- one played piano, the other violin. Another is a dancer.

Butler has a son in North Hampton, Massachusetts who plays violin and also has a daughter who plays piano and guitar.

“And I have one daughter who is a high school English teacher,” Butler said. “She can’t carry a tune. In choir, they told her to be quiet. ‘Just move your lips.'”

“It’s been good for my brain, playing,” Hubley pointed out. “Because you have to have the left hand working while the right hand is working. I use my right hand mostly with my art and not my left. So, that activates different parts of my brain.”

Some time back, Hubley was showing her art in Londonderry and Butler came by, hoping to find someone to teach her how to paint with watercolors.

“Initially, she said no to me,” Butler asserted. “I said, ‘That’s too bad.’ But I said, ‘Well, I’m a musician anyway, so…’ And Loretta said, ‘If you teach me the piano, I will teach you art.'”

“People think it’s easy to play piano,” Butler said. “But it’s not. You have to learn.”

Hubley said she has an ear for music and enjoys classical music.

“But I’ve always had trouble with rhythm,” Hubley said. “I need to count but I lose the rhythm sometimes. But we’re still working on it. I don’t practice as much as I should.”

Butler said it’s not just Hubley: every adult whom she has ever taught has a similar problem with timing.

After Hubley plays for a while under Butler’s tutelage, the two women make their way to Hubley’s studio for the art portion of the lessons.

They look at some encaustic pieces that Butler has been working on.

“You have to heat up the wax in order to move it around with a tool,” Hubley said. “All the tools that we use get encrusted with wax, and then they have to be cleaned.”

Hubley has used zinc with her art as well which is naturally heavy; the art medium is called, intaglio.

“Anything that is below the surface of the plate is intaglio,” Hubley explained. “Anything that you’re printing on top is relief.”

“That’s what I want to learn next,” Butler said.

Hubley talked about aquatint etching and shows a few of her pieces.

“I’ve been doing encaustic, using the color blue,” Butler said. She created a piece that features waves, an inspiration she had after going to the beach.

The two women laugh and share their talent and pointers. One thing they agree on is that they’ve become best friends, having mostly only socialized with one another during the past few months.

Hubley offers advice on Butler’s art as they each clearly enjoy their time learning the other’s craft.

“I absolutely love doing this,” Butler said. “And I don’t really care if people like my art or not.”

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