ROSSVILLE — For little Tiffany Williams, the big grinning Santa Claus painted across the front of the Food Lion is another clue that presents are coming.

“Look, it’s Santa,” the 4-year-old said as she entered the Rossville Boulevard store.

Two days before, the Santa Claus, dancing holly and the words “Happy Holidays” were created by the artful brushstrokes of Janice McLemore. The Rossville resident has painted hundreds, if not a thousand or more, storefront windows since she was a teenager.

“I remember when I was 5 years old, watching my mother paint a snowman in the kitchen window,” Ms. McLemore said. “I didn’t try to do it again until I was 19 years old.”

That’s when her late husband was out of work, and they weren’t sure how the bills were going to get paid.

“I told him that I would paint windows, and he didn’t know what I meant,” she said. “I told him that I would paint store windows for Christmas if he would go inside and ask the shop owner.”

Ms. McLemore said she was painfully shy, and she would stop painting and wait in her car if people crowded around to watch her paint. Now, spectators are welcomed. Though she took a hiatus from painting and lost some customers when her full-time job required more time, the demand for her work is increasing steadily, she said.

One Christmas she painted 200 storefronts all across the Chattanooga and North Georgia areas. She’s cleared as much as $8,000 in a season, she said, and it takes her less than 20 minutes to paint a grocery store’s windows.

Although the painting goes quickly and supplements her regular income as a personal care aide to an elderly woman on Lookout Mountain, Tenn., customers say her work stands out.

“This is the first time we’ve had (Ms. McLemore),” said Beth Byers, customer service manager at the Rossville Boulevard Food Lion. “We’ve had previous window painters, but their work didn’t look anything like this. Her work is awesome.”

Ms. McLemore’s windows are marked with a calling card contained in a small white circle painted just below the window artwork. In the circle are her name and phone number.

“I get calls from kids who see the number below Santa’s face, and they want to know if I am going to bring them presents this year,” Ms. McLemore said.

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