Nearly thirty years ago a relatively young retired couple, Stuart and Marion Jayne, frustrated by the effort and time required to keep up their house in Santa Barbara, were looking for their “perfect” retirement community. By today’s standards, their goal was simple. They wanted an easy-to-maintained residence with a garage big enough for their car but with enough space left over to give Marion a studio and room to store her supplies and paintings.

They had seen and tried living in places from San Diego to Santa Rosa, but never quite found what they were looking for until 1975 when they drove into the partially completed Leisure Village. Camarillo got two new residents and the Camarillo Art Center got a friend for life. What a life, and what a friend!

Last March, after celebrating her 90th birthday, in a surprising act of generosity, Marion quietly informed the Camarillo Art Center that she was making a $10,000 cash donation, the largest the center has ever received.

Requesting anonymity, she said the gift had been a part of her will, but in light of the Center’s immediate needs, she felt now was the right time to give it. She said she was motivated by her desire to “honor the hardworking people who have volunteered over the years.” More practically, she added, “I also wanted to see a good roof on the building and workable locks on the restroom doors.” With a twinkle in her alert blue eyes, half-jokingly she said, “I got tired of people barging in and sitting on my lap.”

For nearly half a century, Marion has been active in the Santa Barbara/Ventura art communities. She had attended UCSB and successfully sold her work throughout the area. Naturally, she soon checked out the tiny Camarillo Art Center that had just been moved to its present location. She was impressed by a young couple, Phyllis Doyon (CAC president at the time) and her husband who, though busy building a rear deck on the one-time field hands’ bunkhouse, had the time and good fortune to sign her up as a member.

In those days, Marion did not have much time to participate fully in the Center’s activities. She was very active in the Santa Barbara Art Association, was gallery director for the Buena Ventura Art Association, and she and Stuart were traveling here and overseas as part of a square dance group.

In 1979, she formed the Painter’s Club in Leisure Village. Over the years, she encouraged hundreds of residents to express themselves through their art. As Club president for 18 years and, as a teacher, she also encouraged involvement in the Camarillo Art Center, which probably explains why Leisure Village residents make up nearly twenty percent of the Center’s total membership.

Marion, who gave up her dream of becoming an architect because she “loved the art of it but not the science,” became, instead, a pioneering woman film cutter, one of the first two women the union demanded be employed in the industry at Pathe in the early thirties. Later, she was again a trailblazer at Technicolor, then back to Pathe where she met her future husband, Stuart, who died twenty years ago.

Recently Marion broke her arm in a bad fall from a ladder in her home. Bits of bone float inside the arm which requires her to attend rehabilitation sessions four days a week. She still paints almost every day and, though it is unlikely she will ever regain full mobility of the arm, she observes, “I have so much yet to do.”

For the Camarillo Art Center, where Marion Jayne has been a wonderful demonstrator in the past, her selfless generosity is as deeply welcome as it was unexpected. Although she repeated her wish not to have any fuss made over her gift, she did agree to let the Center show its appreciation by presenting some of her work to its member, friends, and the public.

In light of her concern for art and its development in Camarillo, her generous appreciation of our hard working volunteers and area artists, it is our pleasure to acknowledge that Marion greatly honors the Camarillo Art Center just by being one of us.