When artist and designer Carol Eldridge lost her husband, Kenny, after 60 years of marriage, the grief was almost too heavy to name.
They had met as seventh-graders, dated through high school, and built a life rich with family, travel, and creative projects. Suddenly, the man who had been by her side for decades was gone.
“It’s the finality of it,” Eldridge said. “You’re never going to get over it. I’m never going to be the same person that I was with him. He was my partner.”
Eldridge turned, as she always had, to art.
A lifelong painter and professional art licenser, she found herself one day picking up a watercolor set to make a birthday card for her grandson, Kyle.
What began as a simple gesture opened a new chapter.
“I dipped the brush in water, and it just flowed,” she said. “It was spontaneous, organic. I wasn’t filling in a sketch or following a plan. It just happened.”
The result was a series of blue-and-white paintings that Eldridge’s daughter immediately dubbed “Marblehead Blues.” Using cobalt, ultramarine, and Prussian blues, Eldridge created loose, memory-driven scenes of her seaside hometown, familiar rooftops, harbors, and shorelines emerging without strict perspective.
“My college instructor would probably say, ‘Carol, what are you doing?’” she said with a laugh. “But it didn’t matter. It was how I was feeling.”
The work became both solace and expression.
“Watercolor is like grief,” Eldridge said. “You’re in control, but you’re not. You let it flow, and it goes where it will.”
Her late husband remains present in the art. Each piece carries a small heart and a quiet dedication to Kenny, a former Raytheon executive and Marblehead High School football captain who was inducted into the Marblehead Gridiron Club.
The couple’s three daughters and nine grandchildren continue to honor his legacy, even establishing the Captain Ken Eldridge ’33 Memorial Scholarship for student athletes.
Eldridge –– who once licensed her designs to national retailers for use on dishes, fabrics, and greeting cards –– now sells prints and cards of the Marblehead Blues series through local shops and directly from her historic home studio: Captains Quarters on Maverick Street.
She hopes the paintings offer others a measure of peace.
“It’s not just about grief,” she said. “People go through job changes, moves, all kinds of loss. Sometimes just letting the colors flow is enough.”
Her studio walls are lined with the work –– 13 or 14 paintings completed in a short burst of creativity –– and the cards bear a dedication to Kenny.
“Time doesn’t heal all wounds,” Eldridge said. “It just makes it easier to carry them. The blues make me happy. They feel peaceful and safe.”
As she looks ahead, Eldridge is considering small open-house hours for neighbors to visit, view the art, and share their own stories.
“It’s not really about the money,” she said. “It’s the interaction with people, having them come in and see what we do.”
Marblehead Blues stands as a tribute and a testament: to love, to memory, and to the strength of creation in the face of loss.