After Nursing for 30 Years, Brenda Sampson Fully Embraces Dream of Becoming An Artist

By Sym Posey | The Birmingham Times Even while serving as an emergency room (ER) nurse for more than three decades, Brenda Sampson never gave up on her dream of becoming an artist. Sampson, who has worked at both the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Medical West Hospital in Bessemer, Alabama, and Princeton Baptist Medical Center in Birmingham, said, “I did some art on the side, and the ERs … allowed me to put my artwork on the walls [of the facilities].” When she retired in 2019, Sampson created a website and did artwork where she would sell from a pitch tent, the most recent of which was set up for this year’s Juneteenth National Independence Day. “Looking at artists from the past, I would think I could draw it better than they did,” she said. Introduction to Art Sampson, born and raised in Bessemer, always wanted to be an artist, but she knew her mother wouldn’t approve of it. “My mother wasn’t going to allow her young baby daughter to be an artist and starve to death. My sister and I both went to nursing school,” said Sampson, who attended J. S. Abrams Elementary School and graduated from...