PAIR COMBINE TO BRING BEAUTY TO CANVAS.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY

They met three years ago in a hospital art class neither of them thought they belonged in.

Joyce Angelini, a volunteer at Northridge Hospital Medical Center, didn't have an eye for art, but she did have arms and hands that worked.

Ron Oliver, a quadriplegic, had the eye but not the working arms and hands.

When they came together in front of an easel, though, everything worked.

Beautifully.

He thought the nurse was crazy when she suggested he give it a try. Mural painting? How could he learn to paint pictures when he couldn't even feed himself?

When the arms that had been so strong before the accident were now only extra baggage he could not even feel, let along use?

Mural painting. Sure. Maybe he'd take up flying jets next, Ron Oliver thought, dismissing the idea of attending the hospital's art class.

``Then the nurse showed me a painting that one of the patients had done with his feet,'' Ron said Thursday. ``It was beautiful. If he could do that with his feet, maybe I could do that with my mouth.

``I still didn't believe I could, but I went to my first art class anyway to give it a try.''

In another wing of Northridge Hospital, Joyce Angelini was telling the director of volunteers that she was willing to help around the hospital anyway she could, but teaching someone to paint was out of the question.

She wasn't an artist. She was a retired administrative secretary with Hughes Aircraft Co., who had more free time than she needed on her hands, and wanted to help people.

She was more than willing to run errands for the nurses and doctors, to push patients in wheelchairs, and do whatever chores needed doing around the hospital.

But helping teach someone to paint? Out of her league. The only painting she ever did was by the numbers.

Please, give it a try, the director persisted. Finally, Joyce agreed, taking the elevator up to the third floor, where the art rehab class met every Tuesday.

She walked through the door behind a nurse pushing the wheelchair of a quadriplegic man who looked as excited about being here as she did.

``I don't know the first thing about art,'' Ron Oliver told the nice volunteer who had just introduced herself to him.

``Neither do I,'' Joyce Angelini said. ``But, it looks like we're in this together.''

So, every Tuesday, they met and they worked. Joyce setting up the oils and canvas, dipping the brushes into the colors Ron wanted on the canvas - then gently placing the brush in his mouth.

Ron leaning forward and moving his head back and forth, up and down - creating the brush strokes that led to the Hawaiian waterfall in his head.

Joyce standing behind him as he attacked the canvas, marveling at what they were creating together as a team.

Art.

They had both been wrong, they laughed. They most certainly did belong in this art class.

The lawyer leans back in his chair and talks about how we all get caught up in the rat race sometimes - how we all lose sight of the things that are really important in life.

When that happens to him, the lawyer says, he just sits in front of the painting he paid $200 for last month - a Hawaiian waterfall hanging on his den wall. It was painted by the brother of some friends of his - painted by mouth.

``When I saw the painting and met Ron, I knew I wanted that painting in my house,'' attorney Victor Alexandroff says.

``It makes me focus on what's really important in life.''

Ron Oliver knows that Joyce Angelini doesn't have to spend time with him, that she makes no money in this volunteer job of hers. Along with the art they share, free time has drawn them close over the years, he says.

``There's something wonderful about knowing someone's spending time with you, helping you, and there are no dollar signs involved,'' he says, studying the English college he is now painting.

Joyce smiles when she hears the kind words because if you ask her who has gotten more out of their friendship, she will tell you it is her, hands down.

It's one of the things that most people don't understand, she says - that volunteers everywhere do indeed get paid.

They get paid in pride - in taking time they now have in retirement and finding a use for it that no paycheck ever matched in feeling.

With that said, Joyce returns to work Thursday, running the new ambassador program she began at Northridge Hospital last year - the program she is now seeking more volunteers for to help her with.

She walks over to a couch in the hospital lobby, and offers a woman sitting alone a cup of coffee and an ear.

She offers her a shoulder to lean on, and as much time as she needs to talk out her troubles and fears.

It's what volunteers do, she says.

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Photo

Photo: Ron Oliver and Joyce Angelini display one of the paintings they create together.

Gus Ruelas/Daily News