Ann Barker’s home is filled with dozens of watercolor paintings.
“They’ve taken over everything!” she said.
Barker organized a watercolor painting pop-up gallery in the Kodiak Marketplace downtown on July 27 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The theme for the show is “80 at 80” – that’s 80 paintings to celebrate her 80th birthday. Any proceeds will benefit Hospice and Palliative Care of Kodiak – a nonprofit aimed at helping people and families facing life-threatening illnesses. Barker volunteered there for years.
“They very much are my charity of choice and that’s why it evolved that I can sell these paintings to benefit hospice,” the painter said.
She said some of her most poignant memories have been part of her time volunteering with the nonprofit. She remembers the story of a man facing death, and being with him in some of his final moments.
“So I held his hand and then he said it’s nice,” she recalled. “This was about nine o’clock at night and he passed away about two in the morning. So this is a man without family, without friends, all alone. But he didn’t die alone because hospice was there, I could hold his hand.”
Barker only started painting these watercolors a year ago. And she didn’t know benefiting Hospice and Palliative Care of Kodiak would be the goal at the beginning.
She said she painted the first ones going on display after her son in Arizona went into remission from leukemia. Barker said it was tough on her and her husband.
“Once I knew he was going to recover I just kept dreaming of home where it was cool and where I could paint,” she said. “And I said ‘Oh I just want to go home and I want to paint.’ And what I started painting was light coming through, light breaking through.”
Some of the earliest paintings going on display are from that time.
Then when it came to how she wanted to celebrate her 80th birthday, she decided to organize an art exhibit. She credits her daughter for the idea to have 80 watercolor paintings to match her age.
Her paintings depict life around Kodiak and Alaska, including mountains, planes, trees and even wildlife like octopi.
Barker moved to the island community in 1969. Moving to Kodiak was a bit of an accident though – she said she and her husband intended to move to Anchorage after camping for a few weeks.
“We were just going to stay overnight in Kodiak and fly back,” she said. “We got to Kodiak, looked around, walked the boat harbor, and fully planned on flying back to Homer the next day.”
But a storm rolled in and they were stuck. By the time planes were flying again, the Barkers had other plans. In just four days, the couple had new jobs and bought a house.
Over the years she and her husband worked as teachers during the winter and commercially fished for salmon out of Olga Bay in the summer.
She said she’d dreamed of living in Alaska since she was in middle school, and that love for the state was part of how she met her husband. Barker said he impressed her in part from reciting poetry about the state and nearby areas.
Here’s her husband, Bill, reciting Spell of the Yukon by Robert Service from memory.
As for the show next weekend, the frames and mats for the paintings were all cut by her husband. The gallery opens July 27.