My Art Journey

JFK (1963),
Elaine de Kooning

I've loved visual art ever since I could hold a crayon. I remember being encouraged early on by my first-grade teacher, Mrs. Schroeder, when coloring in an orange pumpkin in October 1963. It was the year President JFK was assassinated and I vividly remember my teacher crying after the announcement came over the PA. The event happened on my parents' wedding anniversary. It was also the year my Mom became a three-day winner on the gameshow Concentration. We watched her on TV in my older brother's third-grade classroom while making paper-plate Christmas wreathes. All of these things left an indelible impression.

Here's an article, Why Elaine de Kooning’s Portrait of JFK Broke All the Rules from the Smithsonian about the making of a presidential portrait.

Choir Boys Will Be Boys (1938),
Frances Tipton Hunter

My Dad was especially creative. I've blogged about his talent for painting and creating award-winning Christmas displays. One year, he cut out six life-size choir boys and painted them in our likenesses, adding a few other ethnicities to round out the ensemble. I remember how he adapted Santa's sleigh out of a paint tray and sat a stuffed Santa inside, then mounted Styrofoam reindeer on the front of our house. Since our house was white he used a spotlight with a rotating colored disc to change the background of his display. He would spell out messages such as, "Peace on Earth", using wire wrapped in silver garland. Another time, he constructed a huge cross that again used a spotlight for his 'Born in the Shadow of the Cross' display.

This painting was published in the Saturday Evening Post, but not by Norman Rockwell. Notice the shiner and crossed bandage.

Clown (after Emmitt Kelly) (1968)

I blogged about how my brother and I decorated the wall of our Dentist's office with a 3D circus scene one year. My Mom decided that we needed to be enrolled in an oil painting class, which resulted in my one-man show in a display case outside the Principal's office in sixth-grade.

I became an 'Art Major' in high school studying under Mr. George Pappas. While I vaguely remember some of the artwork and paintings I made in his classroom, two projects stick out in my mind. One was painting numbers on wooden blocks for our school tennis court clocks for scheduling play times. The other was creating paper mâché Cardinal heads for our two school mascots. In the yearbook, I was listed as Most Artistic male.

Cowboy (1982), Ken Patterson

In college, I spent my first year studying Architecture. As the market was predicted to be flooded with architects by the time I would graduate, I switched to Engineering. My tech-elective was minicomputers. This ultimately led me to a career in Software Engineering. Here's one of my first post-college watercolors.

Since studying Art History in college, I've been steadily accruing knowledge about the visual arts. I've amassed quite a library of artbooks and have visited art museums around the world. While cruising the Baltics, we docked at St. Petersburg where we had the opportunity to tour the Hermitage Museum. Both the Hermitage (2019) and the Louvre (2011) would require days to see everything on display there.

Mrs. Henderson's Memory Quilt (1998-9)

My passion for art has led me to sharing what I know and learn in a classroom setting. For many years I was an art docent in my daughter's elementary school. Her 6th-grade class made logos of their intended careers using acrylic paint on muslin squares, which my sister-in-law sewed into a memory quilt for the teacher. My daughter wanted to be a Disney Imagineer (top-middle).

I also became an instructor at Green River Community College's Interurban Center for the Arts, teaching other parents to do the Picture Person Program. I've volunteered at the Seattle Art Museum and was a fundraiser for ArtsFund.

Ballet Scene (2019), Ken Patterson

Since my retirement, I have continued to volunteer teach in elementary schools, senior centers and adult assisted living centers, adult dementia daycare, and at Franke Tobey Jones' Senior University. For my pastels class, I copied A Ballet Seen From the Opera Box (1885) by Edgar Degas as an example. My copy was painted on purple pastel paper.

Miró Balance (2021), Patterson

In 2021, I became an online art instructor with Heart Art Healing. I resurrected my lesson on balanced compositions, which had been inspired by Spanish Surrealist Joan Miró. This one could have also been used for my class that used repetition of the spiral shape, symbolizing gratitude.

Gunther (2021), KAP

Myra (2021), KAP

I completed my first commissioned portraits on behalf of Paws with Cause. At PwC we raise money and awareness to care for and advertise the adoption of shelter animals as fur-ever pets. Gunther was a challenge because he was an all-white dog. The client requested the color turquoise in the background. I think the color schemes will enable the portraits to be hung side-by-side.