Kathleen started painting almost by accident. In 1998 she joined an art class to help a friend.

“I enrolled in an Art in the Open Studio class because a friend signed up and didn’t want to go alone,” Kathleen says of the original class at the University of Texas at El Paso. Eventually she began meeting with teacher Earline Barnes and fellow painters Susan Connelly, Janet Jackson and Sandy Matyi (later Maurice Heller joined their group). After an initial show at the Hal Marcus Gallery, the group became known as The Five Painters. “The group just evolved. We all got along well and worked so well together.”

The group showed their work in galleries across the state, including Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Ruidoso, as well as Mesilla and Las Cruces – attracting recognition wherever they went. Soon after, Kathleen began to show her work in major gallery shows in Marfa, Texas, at The Hotel Paisano.

Kathleen started with watercolor, then moved on to acrylic, and then again on to oil. Her art is striking, with colors that demand attention. Whether painting morning shadows in Mesilla, flourishing flowers in bright pots or an old church, Kathleen is able to catch the viewer’s eyes by painting whatever catches her eyes.

“The landscapes here are amazing and we have such good things to paint,” she says of Las Cruces, where she moved five years ago from El Paso with her husband, Bill. In El Paso, Kathleen co-owned Paxson Advertising, then opened an office in Las Cruces while her husband built his career as a banker. Their Las Cruces home in The Boulders was designed to accommodate the couple, and is an extension of Kathleen’s creativity and her work. Lively paintings hang in her personal gallery on the walls and the kitchen serves as her studio. Kathleen has a view of the Organ Mountains that routinely motivates her and a kitchen that is ever so accommodating with cabinets designed, with the help of Nancy Charles-Byres of Charles, Inc. Interior Design Studio, to hold her supplies and other studio items. “It is wonderful because I can cook and paint at the same time.”

Kathleen’s focus in the past has been on major gallery shows where specific pieces are needed, which she enjoyed doing, but now is ready to try some new things. “I’m looking forward to doing some experimenting this year, and participating in some juried shows,” she says. Kathleen is also consistently trying new things, taking new classes and painting with new groups, like the Artamants at the Las Cruces Museum of Fine Art. “I’m driven to try things I’m not certain I can do. I’d rather get good than get rich. My goal is to get better, not just sell my paintings,” she says. Her next planned project is to try her hand at abstract realism.

Kathleen, who grew up in Montana, has traveled the world – on vacations with Bill or to see one of her seven children, 13 grandchildren or eight great-grandchildren. Her ideas for work, while already extensive just from her own backyard, come from many of those trips. In her paintings, she is able to capture those moments in time.

“I can take photos of our trips, but I try not to paint just from those,” she says. “I want to be able to paint what I smelled, and the noises I heard. I don’t just paint the picture, I paint what it was like when I took it.”

It is through those glimpses of time, whether the rugged cliffs jutting over the ocean in Cinque Terre, Italy, or the desert of the Southwest, that Kathleen brings her vision to each of those who see them – through paint, a canvas and her creative talent.