Wassef Boutros-Ghali

 Want more evidence that your professional career need not define you after you move on? These retirees — among them a former lawyer, a marketer, a teacher and a therapist — have become successful artists who have had major gallery showings or won prestigious awards, or both, with their “second act” of self-expression. To them, creativity and the passion to express it were always there; they just lay dormant, waiting for the right time to emerge.

The brother of former U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali started drawing from a young age, but he “belonged to a family that did not consider painting a profession,” he says. “Most of my family studied law with the prospects of involving themselves in the politics of Egypt. I did not see this as my path.” Boutros-Ghali worked in architecture and historic building restoration but retired in his early 60s to paint in his studios in Connecticut and Cairo. “My paintings reflect my architectural training,” he says. “Geometric precision with a sense of place."