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At an age when someone would usually be long retired or considering a low-stress job such as greeting customers at a store, 80-year-old Leigh Rodenbough did something else.

He became a full-time artist.

"I realized that I had a second chance at things when I had been very fortunate to live as long as I have," says Rodenbough of Greensboro. "And I think life is a tremendous blessing, and it's a second chance at a new career."

Five years later, Rodenbough's paintings are represented by Ambleside Gallery in Greensboro, which will be hosting a one-man show of Rodenbough's work. To commemorate the event, the gallery teamed with fine arts publisher Michelle Morton to release "Leigh Rodenbough: Timeless Reflections," a 66-page catalog of the senior artist's work. The book includes 41 pictures of his oil paintings and pastels, an artist's statement and a comprehensive introduction by Morton detailing Rodenbough's brief yet accomplished career.

The book will be released during a reception for the exhibit on Friday.

"In a very relatively short amount of time since he has been a full-time artist, I think he has acquired a maturity that a lot of artists don't acquire in a lifetime of painting," says Jackson Mayshark, owner of the Ambleside Gallery.

A casual artist since childhood who served in the Navy during World War II, Rodenbough grew up in a time when it was not customary for artists -- or anyone else, for that matter -- to follow their dreams. So, like most people of his generation, when the war had ended, he sought a career that would enable him to pay the bills and raise a family.

"I think that was my dad's sort of argument, which was, 'Don't be an artist because you could never make a living out of it,' " Rodenbough says. "So, I sort of turned my head away from it.

"I did high school debating and that sort of thing, and everybody says I ought to be a lawyer, so I became a lawyer, and I enjoyed it thoroughly."

During this busy period of his professional life, Rodenbough never hung up his brush. He continued to paint on the weekends and also pursued another favorite pastime ---- competitive sailing. Now that he's a full-time artist, he combines both of his passions by composing oil paintings and pastels of seascapes.

"Any artist will tell you that water is his friend because it's very reflective and it makes awfully nice compositions," Rodenbough says.

Because of peripheral artery disease in his legs, Rodenbough is no longer able to stand outdoors to do plein-air painting, but this has become an asset to his work. He takes pictures of his subjects, then while painting them onto a canvas or board, he enhances them slightly with flourishes of imagination and emotions stored up from the many times he spent near the water.

"As you get older, your greatest images come back to you, and I think vision is an emotional thing," Rodenbough says.

Morton says that after spending a lot of time with Rodenbough to research the book, it was easy for her to forget how old he was. Beyond the imaginative bursts of colors and emotion he would add to his seascapes, what made his biographer so impressed with Rodenbough was his drive to hone both his skills and communication as an artist.

"What inspired me the most is that he is still striving for high achievement all the time," Morton says. "If he lives to be 95, he'll still be striving for high achievement, and I don't think I've ever met anybody who is still trying to get better and better at his business every day at that age."

So, now that Rodenbough has had his own one-man show and a book about his work, what are his plans as he approaches the ninth decade of his life?

Before he hears the end of this question, Rodenbough interrupts.

"Paint like hell," he says, laughing.

Contact Joe Scott at movieshowjoe@gmail.com