‘Everybody can paint’

Old Hotel Artist of the Month makes creating art less scary

OTHELLO — Nellie Hoot, the Old Hotel Art Gallery’s Artist of the Month, has been several kinds of artist in her time. “It’s been years of painting and going through different stages in my life,” she said. “For a while I was doing pet portraits, because it makes me feel good and it was making me money as well. And then it started shifting into other things.” Some of the “other things” on display at the Old Hotel include watercolors, charcoal and oil paints on canvas, wood and even a handsaw. One of Hoot’s favorite surfaces is cymbals, because her husband, a drummer, keeps breaking them, she said.