She’s been a dancer, a musician, an actor and a teacher. South Portland resident Claudia Hughes said it was only natural she would begin painting after she retired.
“It’s kind of a family joke,” she said. “Everybody always said ‘when you get through all the performing arts you’re going to go to the visual.’”
Hughes said her musical career began in the seventh grade, when she first picked up a flute. She went on to graduate from the University of Georgia with a degree in music education and spent three years teaching nearly 1,500 students ranging from elementary school to junior high in a small Alabama mill town.
“It was not a pretty picture,” she said. “It was overwhelming.”
Once she had had enough of teaching music, Hughes decided to become a modern dancer. She began performing with groups in Alabama, and with the original Ram Island Dance Company in Portland when she moved to Maine in the 1970s.
Fifteen years later, at age 41, Hughes once again realigned her sights and began acting. She performed once with the Portland Stage Company while attending acting courses at the University of Southern Maine. In 1983 she began teaching theater at the Waynflete School in Portland.
One of her former Waynflete students was recently nominated for a Tony award.
“I take absolutely no credit for it,” she laughed. “He was one of those kids that just did it, and did it well.”
Hughes taught at the school for 16 years before she retired in 1999. 
Hughes said her experience with each of the different art mediums – music, dance and theatre – complement one another. She said her experience with each have helped her succeed in all her different positions.
“When it was time to do a musical at Waynflete, I would know the music,” she said. “There is definitely a correlation.”
Now, if you happen to walk by her small studio in South Portland – with large picture windows overlooking busy Cottage Street – you’re more likely to spot her putting paint to canvas than playing a flute, practicing a dance move or rehearsing her lines. For the past eight years, Hughes has spent six hours each day painting in the top floor of the small, cottage-like building, while she listens to music and watches the weather change outside.
“If you don’t do it, you don’t get what you want from it,” she said of her rigorous daily routine. “I just like painting, I like the solitude of it.”
Hughes said she took courses at the Maine College of Art shortly after she retired.
“I already knew what I wanted to do, I figured I had better figure out how to do it,” she said.
Hughes said she painted with watercolors for “about a year” before she settled on painting with oil, now her sole medium.
“I like it because you can just paint right over it,” she said. “You don’t have to worry about it.”
Hughes’ first art show was in 2003, in what used to be Barbara’s Kitchen in South Portland. Since then she has donated paintings to Audubon auctions and various local exhibits while staying in touch with other students at the Maine College of Art in Portland. 
“There are a lot of artists here,” she said. “It’s wonderful to be able to look up to so many people.”
Hughes recently finished a series of paintings to be featured at the 3fish Gallery in Portland, paintings inspired by this past winter.
“It was such a hard winter I just said, ‘OK, let’s make it work,’” she said.
The paintings feature snow-covered landscapes at Fort Williams in Cape Elizabeth, Bug Light and some of the oil tanks dotting the South Portland area. Hughes said she began working on the exhibit in January, painting from pictures she took.
“Some people paint outside in the winter, but I’m not one of them,” she said.
Hughes said she quickly learned how difficult it was to paint snow.
“Living in Maine, we’re surrounded by it all the time, but to try and paint it is something totally different,” she said.
The outdoor settings featured in her upcoming exhibit are just one of the many things Hughes said she enjoys painting.
“I enjoy the story that people and interiors tell us,” she said, pointing at her painting of a man and a woman inside a room, each with a glass in hand. “You don’t know what is going on there, but it’s something.”
Hughes said she makes a point to return to Waynflete at least once a year to help put together costumes, direct and teach theater students.
“I enjoy keeping up with the kids,” she said.
Hughes said she brings the dynamic nature of the performing arts into her paintings.
“There is always so much going on in the theater, and I’m used to that,” she said. “I don’t lack ideas. Starting a painting is great, you’re excited and want to get into it, but then you can go too far. I think the greatest challenge is knowing when to stop.”
While Hughes stays in touch with her roots on the stage by visiting Waynflete and sometimes painting photographs of certain theatrical scenes, she said she has no plans to go back to acting or to move on to a different artistic genre in the future.
“If I’m acting, I’m not painting,” she said. “Painting is it, there’s nothing else.”