But often — and sometimes without even knowing it — the men and women enrolled in classes at the Alzheimer's Center of the East Bay paint personally meaningful symbols from lives that are fading from their memories.

"Art is a great way for them to express themselves emotionally and physically," said program director Lauren Eppinger. "It also highlights their strengths, and not their cognitive losses."

The amateur artists work all year to create the paintings auctioned at the annual gala fund-raiser. Some artists are clearly painting out of a labor of love. For others, the task seems to be more of a labor.

"The (participants) are still creating and doing beautiful work, and their lives come through, past and present," said Micheal Pope, deputy director of the center.

The room at the Berkeley center is hot and smells like a combination of paint and cafeteria food. The two dozen painters sit around large tables, their canes, scooters and walkers nearby. Some sit expressionless in front of blank, white paper, seemingly afraid to pick up the brush and dab it in the watercolor tray.

Others paint wildly, streaking the paper with every color of the rainbow, creating works thatlook like they belong in a high-brow gallery of modern art. On this particular day, a cage with some finches sits in the middle of one table.

As the birds chirp, Eloise, 70, paints a simple picture of the winged creatures. (For confidentiality, participants are identified by their first names only.)

"I used to love (painting), but my mother was after me to do other things," she said. "I want to learn again, I want to do what I used to do."

Alzheimer's disease is a progressive brain disorder that destroys a person's memory and ability to learn and communicate, among other things, according to the Alzheimer's Association.

Many of the participants in the art classes can't explain why they painted a certain picture or how it relates to their past.

But staff members say the paintings are clearly representative — possibly subconsciously — of their experiences, jobs, families and hobbies.

For example, Eloise painted an earlier work, "Crazy Peas," from memories of growing peas in "a big garden" in Aynor, S.C. "They grew on 6-feet-tall poles from wood we found. Those peas were so good in cornbread," she said of the painting.

A man named Lonnie painted "goatfish," creating a colorful half-goat, half-fish animal by using memories of his boyhood on a farm and his life-long passion for fishing.

Stella, a shy, petite woman, was inspired by a stuffed owl on loan from a wildlife museum. She named her painting of an owl, perched on a branch and looking a little perplexed, "The Owl Says be Kind to Everyone."

The 89-year-old woman also created a surrealistic-looking painting called "Always Forever in a Dream." It resembles a person — or maybe a ghost of some sort — swirling in darkish streaks of paint.

No one knows for sure, but staff members said the painting might express the way people with Alzheimer's disease feel — caught in a dream.

Alzheimer's Center for the East Bay, with daytime activity programs in Berkeley and Hayward, will auction 18 professionally framed watercolor paintings and pastel drawings by adults with Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia. The auction is expected to raise about $35,000 for the centers, for classes, physical and occupational therapy, meals and snacks for about 70 people daily.

"Journeys: Images & Alzheimer's" auction and reception, 6:30 to 9:30 p.m., Thursday, at Piedmont Community Hall, 711 Highland Ave., Piedmont. Tickets are $40 and $100. For more information, call 644-8292.

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