Remember the saying “once you learn to ride a bike, you never forget”? We may have a paint-smudged example of that life lesson here in our office.

VANGEL Senior Art Director Kevin Shults attended Columbia College in the late ’70s, majoring in graphic design. There he took one painting class per semester ­– eight classes in all – taught by esteemed surrealist painter and professor Sid Larson. During Kevin’s four years at CC, he entered exactly one piece of work in one art show, and that was for a class assignment: a charcoal drawing in a 1981 Columbia Art League exhibit.

Years go by. Kevin marries, has children, and moves up the ranks as art director at VANGEL. He produces countless successful marketing campaigns. He mentors middle-school kids, judges student advertising projects and teaches college graphic design classes. He tours the country picking the mandolin with bluegrass band Midnight Flight.

But he doesn’t pick up a paintbrush.

Then in late 2011, Kevin, finding his children entering adulthood, his touring days with the band at an end, and a little extra time on his hands, decides to create an oil painting for CAL’s “Seven Deadly Sins (and the Seven Holy Virtues)” exhibit.

Apparently, not even 30 intervening years, fatherhood and an initial dearth of Winsor & Newton oils can stop a talented artist when the muses call.

The portrait, titled “Greed,” engages the eyes, toys with the mind, and has won the acclaim of the local art crowd. Among entries from 65 artists, Kevin’s oil painting was singled out for a third-place ribbon at the exhibit’s Jan. 25 reception.

Kevin and his painting have also become media darlings, featured in the Tribune for two weeks running.

How to explain his immediate success? Is it Kevin’s years of creating fabulous visual concepts at VANGEL? The training he received as a student at CC? Muscle memory? Is he an artist savant? You be the judge.

You may view Kevin’s “humorous and timely” piece at the exhibit through February 25.