ROCKLAND — She’s a painter on canvas, windows and kids’ faces and there is nothing she loves better than a splash of color in her life, right down to her roots.

“I got these purple highlights from Sogno Salon,” said Elizabeth McKinney. “They’re great permanent colors.” This is about the fourth or fifth color she’s had done to her hair. She has had orange, fuchsia, teal and magenta highlights in the past. She said, “I’ve seen more and more women of a certain age coloring their hair with these vivid, bright colors, so it’s kind of a trend.”

I visited her in her Rockland home office as she worked on turning some Ocean State Job Lot holiday crafts into fanciful holiday awards in time for Rockland Main Street’s Festival of Lights this weekend, something she’s done for the last four years. The awards are for the Parade of Lights as well as for the best store decorations. She is also a graphic designer and has done the festival’s logo and posters for a number of years.

“I was always interested in color,” she said. “I was fascinated by the fact that the three fairies in Cinderella had sprinkles from their magic wands that matched their gowns. That’s the first time I can remember caring about color. And I can always remember asking my father after he bought a new car ‘What color is it?’ And he was indignant, like ‘That’s the last thing that matters.”

McKinney grew up in Michigan. A painter who developed her skills in high school, she went back to her creative roots at age 40, after a divorce. She graduated from The Art Center, a design school in Albuquerque, N.M., with an associate’s degree in advertising art.  After 20 years in the southwest, she remarried and she and her husband moved to Maine in 1999.

Along with her graphic design business, she paints a number of storefront windows in Rockland, and in Camden as well. Likely you’ve seen her work for the Windjammer Festival, The Lobster Festival, the North Atlantic Blues Festival and Maine Boats Homes & Harbors show as well as specialty one-off events for the Strand Theatre and the Farnsworth Art Museum.

“I paint windows with craft acrylic, but first, I actually have to  clean the spot I'm going to paint because of oil particulants in car exhaust or else the paint will crawl around,” she said.

Of all of her creative endeavors, McKinney considers face painting to be the most fulfilling. “I love face painting because kids are used to someone doing maybe a little flower on their cheek, but I go all out with flowers and curlicues and vines. So, when they are handed a mirror, they go ‘Wow!’ That’s very rewarding,” said McKinney.

Happy with all of the little colorful pieces that make up her life and work, she said.  “I think if you have creativity, it’s across the whole spectrum of your life.”

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com