As he wandered around the art galleries of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Edward Peterson found himself admiring the work of a young painter named Carrie Wild. She was painting bison.

Curious, he stopped to talk. He would have never guessed that a year later he’d return with his own bison paintings for a solo exhibition at Wild’s gallery, Gallery Wild.

An art career was a new beginning for Peterson after 38 years as Snohomish High School’s celebrated band director.

His exhibition has become one of the fondest moments of his life. “It still, you know, brings tears to my eyes,” said Peterson, whose work is displayed at Tempo Gallery in Astoria. “You could’ve painted your whole life and be really good, and never get an opportunity like that.”

At 88, he’s been painting for nine years. Clocking 12 hours a day, seven days a week at the easel, he attributes his success to practice.

“Every painting has tremendous failures, and then finally, it works,” he said. He likened the experience to a marriage; you disagree and scrap ideas, “but you always end up still madly in love.”

Although his art career seemed to have been by accident, Peterson is sure this part of his life is meant to be. That’s how he felt about being a band director, too.

In an adventurous time conducting the Panther Band at Snohomish High School southeast of Everett, Washington, he took his students to play concerts around the world.

Among the highlights, the band played the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland in 1971, the same year as Aretha Franklin. They played for President Ronald Reagan in 1985. Three years later, they were invited to perform a concert on the Great Wall of China.

The band won Washington state championships in 1979, 1989, 1991 and 1992.

“I look back at that very honestly and I wonder how on earth did all of that really happen? And why did it happen?” he said. “I gave it everything I had, and that’s the same thing that translates into my art. It’s the best thing I can do.”

For all the accolades the Panther Band earned during his run — Peterson is in the Snohomish High School Hall of Fame — he feels that part of his life was more about his students.

“I got a lot of nice compliments and all that stuff with the bands and choirs I had. You know, it was always the kids, not me,” he said. “With painting it was me, and it’s really been difficult for me to accept compliments.”

Now, Peterson finds the most important thing in life is to look forward and be himself. His art career has given him a new level of confidence.

Through the Tempo Gallery, he has met local artists he has a great appreciation for, as well as other people he has encountered in Astoria.

“Being in my 80s is the first time in my life that I’ve been comfortable in my own skin. I always thought I had to be something better, or I was inferior to,” he said.

“I’ve learned to be happy with me. I wish I’d learned that a long time ago.”