Esther Nowell says three things keep her young at heart: yoga, yogurt and no shoes.

At 98, Nowell still travels, teaches art and creates sketches, ceramics and paintings in her home art studio in the same neighborhood she grew up in as a child in Kaimuki.

“It is much better to be old than to be young,” said Nowell, “because when I was young I was worried all the time, about money and my kids, always worried. Now I have no worries, and I just do whatever I please, all day long, every day.”

Nowell starts every morning with her own 20-minute yoga routine, which she started practicing at age 50 at the YWCA. She can still do a shoulder stand. She believes in a daily dose of yogurt as part of a healthy diet. She spends her days wearing a comfortable pair of slippers or walking in bare feet, whenever possible.

In her artist’s statement, Nowell said, “My work doesn’t deal with the problems of the world. I’ll leave that to others.”

Instead, she delves into the creation of animals, faces, plants, patterns, texture and colors, especially blue and white. She loves cats, the subject of many of her watercolors, portrayed in comical poses as well as dressed in kimono or wrapped in colorful pareo, strumming ukulele.

She makes ceramic beads and jewelry as well as fish with expressive faces, animal figurines in playful poses, and various versions of Jizo, a smiling Buddha, with hands clasped together in peace.

“I just want to make things that are pretty and that will make people happy,” she said. “That’s my philosophy.”

Nowell was born in 1920 on a farm in Ohio but has been in Hawaii since she was 18 months old. She walked to Aliiolani Elementary School, then attended Roosevelt High School and graduated from the University of Hawaii at Manoa with a degree in education.

Although she was qualified to teach elementary school, she never did.

“I never did it and I never wanted to,” she said. “I can’t handle those kids.”

Instead, she has had a decades-long career as an artist, including a stint designing ads for Foodland and illustrating children’s books. She was an artist at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, and she has been teaching art to adults since the mid-’60s.

She married Floyd Nowell not long after graduating from college, and they had four daughters, two of whom are still living. Her husband, who ran several businesses, died in 1994.

Today she has two grandkids, two great-grandkids and three great-great-grandkids.

Nowell goes to the library regularly to borrow books and to indulge her passion for reading. She enjoys spending time in her garden of herbs, plants and succulents, which fill her ceramic creations.

Alana Burrows, her good friend of 40 years, said what she admires most is that Nowell is a lifelong learner.

“She still wants to learn and figure things out,” Burrows said. “She enjoys life.”

Besides teaching three art classes — two in ceramics and one on watercolor painting — at the Hawaii Potters Guild and Ala Wai Community Park, Nowell participates in art exhibits and craft fairs.

Teaching is fun, she said, and it keeps her on her toes.

“I need to prepare for my classes and have a project ready for (students) to do, so that keeps me going.”

She has several ongoing projects, including a ceramic angel with wings. Once, she created a self-portrait in a journal every day until all of the pages were filled. For fun she also makes little paper books full of sketches — one is called “Book of Cats,” and another is called “The Story of Esther.”

She still doodles.

And she continues to travel, whenever she can. She’s been to almost every corner of the world — Africa, Chile, Peru, Fiji, Tahiti, Burma, Japan, Sri Lanka and India, just to name a few. But even a recent trip to North Carolina with her eldest daughter, Linda, to visit museums was inspirational, she said, giving her ideas that will last for weeks.

On every trip, she takes a blank book, and by the time she returns, the pages are filled with colorful sketches, notes, mementos and photos.

“I’ve always been a reader, and I want to see the things I read about, you know?” she said. “I saw the Taj Mahal and it exceeded my expectations. I really was so impressed with it.”

Although she does not venture far by car, she still has her driver’s license and drives to her classes and the library. She plans to keep living independently and creating art, which, after all, she said, is what keeps life interesting.

“I feel that I’m a very fortunate person,” Nowell said.