People-sized canvases hang from the walls of Art Center Waco, their broadly brushed images suggesting people, flowers, pets and everyday objects painted in a rush as if to capture the essence of their subjects.

That’s at first glance, but longer views reveal more: suggestions of other images that painter Harriet Hayward worked in the background; similarities in colors, particularly blues and reds; a touch of whimsy.

Upstairs in the center’s studio, a work table supports a sheaf of Hayward’s unmounted canvases, products of a free-flowing creativity. Downstairs, a display case showed the everyday materials she used to paint, as well as the wit often in her work. Both show sides of the 5-foot-tall Hayward, a longtime artist and arts advocate whose lifelong art whirl introduced hundreds, if not thousands of Waco residents to the joy of creating. Art Center Waco pays tribute to its longtime supporter and volunteer in the exhibit “Harriet Hayward Reunion.”

Hayward died Nov. 2 at the age of 87, a quiet death that, on her request, didn’t get much notice even though she spent most of her life active in art in Waco.

Hayward, a Waco native, held degrees as diverse as a commercial art certificate from the Ray School of Art in Chicago, engineering management from the University of Chicago and a bachelor’s in fine arts from Baylor University.

At the Santa Fe Institute of Fine Arts in New Mexico, she studied with such artists as Wayne Thiebauld, Lee Mullican, Richard Diebenkorn, Nathan Olivera and Nancy Graves.

She was artist-in-residence at Art Center Waco, J.H. Hines Elementary School and Midway Elementary School, and taught at MCC, Baylor and the Waco Creative Art Center.

It’s telling that part of the exhibit features an easel and canvas in the center’s upstairs studio provided for visitors to make their own marks.

Friends and family shared their memories of Hayward at a Feb. 25 exhibition opening, which, joined to an earlier show at Temple’s Cultural Activities Center, her daughter Kate Hayward called “the best memorials” to Harriet’s life. Here’s a sampling of local remembrances, a short collage of a life that was art.

Jill Michaels, past-president Art Center Waco board of trustees

Michaels remembers a Sunday afternoon art class held outside at Art Center Waco in which Hayward taught kids, including Michaels’ four children, how to paint cows. Cows. Their shapes. Their colors. Their cow-ness. Her kids loved it, and so did Michaels.

Years later, when Michaels became an Art Center board member, she’d visit Hayward at the artists’s home where she lived with her husband O.T., former chairman of the Baylor University geology department. Invariably, Hayward would press her to take a canvas home — a habit, recalled by many friends.

“I think her power as an artist helped her see life more fully,” Michaels said. “She saw things the ordinary person didn’t see.”

Karl Umlauf, artist-in-residence, Baylor University

“She was very much in charge of the art development going on in Waco,” said Umlauf, who first met her in 1961 when he was a fresh graduate of the University of Texas at Austin. Hayward was instrumental in planting the seeds that grew into Art Center Waco, located downtown in its beginning years, and continually worked to help local artists, he said.

Umlauf noted her impressionistic paintings frequently worked on different levels, an easily accessible image for the casual viewer, but a more complex meaning for those willing to look deeper. “There was an intellectual quality that was there . . . In her paintings there was almost an magnetic after-image that would appear when you would see the whole painting,” he said.

Mark Arnold, executive director of Art Center Waco

“She would always tell her painting classes, ‘You can paint. Just do it.’ ” he said. The director remembered she’d play “Where’s Waldo” with kids going through the gallery to make them work to find images in paintings. “Harriet was all about the education of art and working with kids, especially underprivileged kids in Waco,” he said.

Virginia DuPuy, Waco mayor

A longtime friend of the artist and her family, DuPuy remembered Hayward as a font of creative thinking and energy. “She was a gentle genius, small in stature, but enormous in influence,” she said. “She didn’t think of art as a piece of work to be treasured, but a process of seeing and putting ideas down.”

DuPuy remembered Hayward often came around to collaborate on student projects at St. Paul’s Episcopal School, where DuPuy once taught, or Central Presbyterian Church, Baylor University and McLennan Community College. From a 15-foot eagle welded from discarded beer cans for an Earth Day emphasis to ideas about incorporating Super 8 film into a project a generation before multimedia became a buzz word, Hayward was a stimulating presence. “She was always making the right things happen.” DuPuy said.

John Chatmas, McLennan Community College art instructor

When Hayward wasn’t creating art of her own, she was supporting others in their art, said Chatmas, who has taught art at MCC for 40 years. “She had a very good spirit. She was very compassionate,” he recalled. “She thought of art as a basic human impulse, not something for the elite or those in an ivory tower, and she acted on that.”

Ann Garrett, Mayborn Museum director of exhibitions, former Art Center Waco education coordinator 1996-2007

Garrett recalled Hayward sometimes would nudge students contemplating blank paper or canvases into action by painting a stroke on the blankness in front of them. Hayward’s own technique had an inner rhythm. “She kept things in her head and when it was ready, it just happened,” she said. Hayward’s eye invariably stretched the horizon of those around her. Garrett recalls looking at the woods behind the artist’s home during one visit and noticing a scattering of Hayward’s canvases — propped under trees.

Humorous, at ease, a creative poet as well as visual artist, Hayward “was kind of a big kid herself,” Garrett said. “She was crazy and funny and generous — the kind of old lady I’d like to be.”

Kate Hayward, daughter and instructional designer in San Antonio

Those who attended the Art Center Waco reception talked about the stories that Kate shared; even brother Tim (with Chris being the third Hayward child) steered a reporter to her.

As a girl, Kate remembered that coloring within the lines was important at school — a state mandate, in fact — and pointed crayons made that easier. “Mom broke my crayons, peeled the paper off and said, ‘Look, you can color with the sides, too.’ That was a little too stretchy for a child,” Kate recalled. “I see the reasons why (for her mother’s actions) in my middle age: The edges are much more interesting.”