Three years ago, Rose Abrahamson told a Vineyard Gazette reporter her art show then at the Shaw Cramer Gallery was her last. Now this summer, at 89 years of age, she is saying this show at the same gallery will be her last.

As talented and respected as she is, whenever Mrs. Abrahamson produces new paintings it calls for an exhibit. And just as well she is having another, because this show includes what she calls the best piece she ever has made.

Mrs. Abrahamson is an expressionist painter. She uses mixed media, a multitude of textures and brushstrokes of paint against canvas. There is cloth, paper, strokes of pastel colors, and little pieces of a well-lived life.

“The way I work is very intuitive. I never know what is going to come out. Sometimes, sometimes very interesting things come out,” Mrs. Abrahamson said. It is a Saturday morning and she is sitting in a chair right next to her easel. There is acrylic paint still drying. Her most recent work already is hanging in the Shaw Cramer Gallery on Main street, Vineyard Haven. Mrs. Abraham-son says she is thinking about a talk she will give on Saturday, July 2.

Mrs. Abrahamson believes her works are made up of many layers, like the human spirit. There are the details in life, things we know, we remember and we aspire to. But then inside, or around, there also is a world not wrapped up in the moment — voices, images or thoughts that have a deeper significance than this moment.

There is a journey in the making of a painting, Mrs. Abrahamson said, and she is often surprised by the outcome.

“I try so hard to convey things. I have a piece in the show that I think is one of my best pieces. It is the best piece I have ever done. And it was a struggle, a terrible struggle on the canvas,” she said.

The painting is called Dreams of Home. “I worked harder on it than I have worked on any painting,” she said.

For a long time, Mrs. Abrahamson said, she struggled to bring the piece together, working day and night. “I started it in early spring. I think I worked on it every chance I could get. It got worse and worse. Then somewhere along the line, I put a little figure on the left-hand side, a figure holding a book,” she said.

Then, while playing with a collage on the other side, she peeled the paper off. “As I started taking the paper off, I found the figure of a man. I was just playing around, and the man looked like he might be carrying a gun, like a soldier. I think somehow subconsciously, I got there. I don’t know. It is very mystical.

“I believe there is something in the subconscious,” she said. “It must be a very primitive side of our mind. I have experienced this a number of different times. After all, the human spirit doesn’t just live right now.”

In her creations Mrs. Abrahamson touches base with the many different levels of the creative soul, across place and time.

She recalls when she was growing up in the Bronx as a child, an elementary school teacher took her in a new direction, she never forgot. “I had a teacher who suggested we put down our crayons and think of a make-believe animal or a make-believe flower. ‘I don’t want a daisy. I want you to think of how a flower should look,’ she said.

“Well, I was in ecstasy. Before that, we were taught how to copy this or to copy that. I loved that lady. It was like I fell into a pot of gold,” Mrs. Abrahamson said. “I couldn’t stop doing that.”

Mrs. Abrahamson used to live in Pilot Hill Farm with her husband. They were originally from Washington, D.C. and New York city. Mrs. Abrahamson cherishes her memories of those days of Pilot Hill, of taking walks with her husband on the north shore. He was interested in swimming, she says. She was interested in collecting items for future collages and paintings.

Her husband died in 1998. “I couldn’t afford to keep the house. I needed the income,” she said. She sold the house and bought a home closer to downtown Vineyard Haven. The house includes a backyard studio, which allows her to continue in her creative discovery. The studio space, she said, “was unfinished and was full of furniture” when she first saw it.

She had the little studio insulated and winterized. On this Saturday morning, the air inside is cool. A fan overhead circulates the air, which outside is cool and foggy.

She still finds great comfort in art. She’ll be 90 years old in October. “Painting is like an inner journey, a quiet discovery,” she said.

“You find gentle breakthroughs, small and innocent happiness,” she said. “It extends your inner universe.”

On the wall of her studio is a phrase that puts into words her description of painting: “A plethora of glitches.”

She will be giving a talk at the Shaw Cramer Gallery on Saturday, July 2 at 6 p.m., on collage and painting. The talk is free. Mrs. Abrahamson will be exhibiting her paintings there through Sunday, July 3.

Shaw Cramer Gallery is on the second floor at 56 Main street in Vineyard Haven. Gallery hours are from 10 to 6 p.m. every day. For more information, call 508-696-7323.