Foil: 8 Panel: F86 Sabre Pilots Association Column: 4 Line: 43

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Canvases line the walls of her hallway and bedrooms.
"This place is a wreck," she says as she ushers me past the portraits, abstracts
and still lifes to a comfortable rocker. "I always say walk in at your own risk. I'm a lousy housekeeper."
It's easy to imagine Carolina Hirsch bumbling around her apartment, dabbing paint on this canvas and that, willing her subjects to come out right. The petite senior citizen has at least 50 medium and large paintings in her apartment, which is where she does most of her creating. To the untrained eye, all of the canvases look finished; but Hirsch doesn't consider them to be finished until they're gone.
Despite all the works, Hirsch says she doesn't paint every day because she's not in the mood every day. When she does paint, it's usually for two to three hours in the morning.
Hirsch, who won't divulge her age until she hits 100, began painting with watercolors as a small child in Pennsylvania. Her parents owned a store and she'd sell her works there. She left for New York City in her late teens to study at the Art Students League
"I went to New York with $35 my brother loaned me. Can you imagine the nerve?" she says, surprised.at her own naiveté. "I never talked.to a fellow before I shook their hand. In the Italian colony' (in Pennsylvania), a girl never talked to fellows."
Seven of her latest paintings, all done this year, hang in the gallery. The whole scene is reminiscent of a fairy tale told in Sunday school in which an agent of God watches over the lost. The strong-jawed angel's face is surrounded by golden hair; his dewy eyes look down comfortingly on the child. They stand in a deep wood beside a river and the angel seems to be showing-the boy the way out.
The archangel Michael is another of Hirsch's subjects. She uses brilliant reds, blues and greens to portray the angel sending Satan back to his subterranean lair. Michael, his wings outstretched and: his hair blowing in the wind stands on a cliff before a fierce blue and green sky and an angry sea. His right arm is raised high above his head and his hand holds a double-edged sword. His left arm is stretched downward, toward the devil and holds the scales of justice.
The angel's face is determined, yet calm as he looks toward Satan, who is in the lower right comer.
Or at least part of him is. A large black wing surrounded by flames pokes out of a hole representing an entrance to Hell. "I was afraid to put the devil's face in because I'm superstitious. What if he came out of the painting?" Hirsch says "So I just put his wings in. The rest of him is in the hole.
One of the most striking pieces of the collection is a portrait of San Genaro, patron saint of Naples, Italy, where Hirsch’s family is originally from.
A warm burst of color provided by the saint's gold-accented red vestment, and a yellow, seemingly tangible halo, serve to make him the most life-like of Hirsch's paintings.