These life drawings by Lou Varro were completed in the late 1940s while he was studying art in Southern California.

Arts Council Executive Director Daniel North was sitting at a desk in the gallery one day when an 82-year-old visitor named Lou Varro began talking to him about art. North soon discovered that Varro had taken many life drawing classes back in the 1940s, unusual for anyone except professional artists. North asked to see the drawings.

The result is "Lou Varro: The Drawings," an exhibition of 12 of Varro's drawings opening Friday at the Lorimier Gallery. "Lou Varro: The Paintings," an exhibit of 10 Varro paintings, will open at the gallery in May.

A reception for the artist will be held from 5-7 p.m. Friday at the gallery, 119 Independence.

North was amazed by the technical quality of Varro's drawings, which very much reflects the late 1940s era.

"It's kind of a nod to classicism and the work being done then. It's kind of Disneyesque with the strong black lines around everything," North said.

Actually, Varro's strong hand is that of a man who spent more than 30 years as a technical illustrator, senior draftsman and engineering designer in the Southern California aerospace industry. The many paintings that hang in his basement gallery are merely the accumulation of a lifetime fascination with art.

Varro had a hard early life. Born in Saskatchewan, Canada, he lost his mother when he was only 2. When he was 5, his father found a job maintaining railroad tracks and moved his three sons into a boxcar. That was their home for the next three years.

Growing up, Varro delivered groceries and apprenticed himself to an interior decorator. At night, he took art classes. He's seen a mountain landscape painting that thrilled him.

"I said, If I could painting something that good, that"s what I'm going to do," recalled.

As a member of the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II, he learned photography and eventually attended the now-renowned Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, Calif. "I thought I could make a living as a photographer as opposed to a starving artist," he said.

But he couldn't find work as a photographer and was drawn back to taking art classes at the Choinard Institute. He took classes for four years. "I was going to do really serious art," he says.

Eventually his educational assistance through the G.I. Bill ran out, and the Northrup company was looking for artists who could trace drawings of military hardware. Thus began his 32-year career in the aerospace industry.

"I was making a living as a technical artist, a conceptual artist ... but it wasn't the kind of work I really wanted to do," he said.

Ultimately, he doesn't think he was good enough at the kind of work he wanted to do or that it would have sold.

Varro and his late wife, Isabel, moved to Cape Girardeau because she had family in Charleston, Ill., and they wanted to live in the proximity.

As good as Varro's drawings are, North says, "The most amazing thing is, this is his first exhibit.

Facing his first artist's reception Friday is a bit daunting for the soft-spoken Varro. "If I get

(hrough that I'll be proud of myself," he said.)