Katherine O’Hara has been painting all her life. 

Both of Katherine’s parents were artists. At the age of 2 or 3, her mother started encouraging Katherine to draw. By the time she was 12, she had the run of her father’s studio. He bought her Winsor & Newton Oil paints. As long as she respected the space, she could paint anything. They each guided her but also encouraged her own creativity.

In high school, a nun who taught art mentored and encouraged her. She would let Katherine help other students. And she began to make money by doing portraits. She went on to the Rocky Mountain School of Art, then the University of Denver, and graduated from the University of Colorado with degrees in English and Art. She stayed to study for a graduate degree in Art History but left without matriculating over a fight with her advisor over her thesis topic and set out making art.

She wandered away from art, but in 1985 settled in Seattle because of its thriving art community and took a job at Preston, Gates and Ellis. The firm had a large, very prestigious art collection gathered by Attorney Joel Starin. Discovering her knowledge of art, he invited her to curate the collection. She documented, appropriately framed and hung the collection.

In 1989, Seattle held Goodwill Games with Russia, and the law firm helped add an art dimension to it. She helped curate a show for a small group of Russian artists who were invited to Seattle. “The Russians had nothing to work with in those days,” Katherine said, “they were working with house paint.”

Once again, Katherine began to paint, and once again, stopped because she couldn’t afford framing. She went to work for the EPA and soon found herself doing portraits for fellow staff. And so began a new chapter she is still pursuing today at 78. She gets work by word-of-mouth and makes portraits of pets, babies and family members. And she does some landscapes, working mostly today in watercolor and acrylic. Working from photos, she has a unique ability to catch the personality, the mood, the right emotion of each subject.