Richard Gilkey

Gilkey was born in Bellingham, Washington, on December 20, 1925, and spent his first six years in British Columbia, Canada, where his father worked in the logging industry as a timber cruiser, identifying and marking trees to be cut down. The family then returned to Washington's Skagit Valley region (where Gilkey's paternal great-grandfather and maternal grandfather had been early residents), living in March Point, a small town near Anacortes. When Richard was twelve, his family moved to Seattle, where he and his brother Tom, who was two years older, attended Ballard High School. There he enjoyed art classes with Orre Nobles, and showed an aptitude for sketching. This would be his only formal art education. On December 8, 1941, the day after the Pearl Harbor attack, Tom Gilkey enlisted in the Marine Corps, and Richard, at age 17, soon followed suit. He served in the 3rd Marine Raider Battalion, and was in heavy fighting on the island of Bougainville during the Solomon Islands campaign. Wounded multiple times, he was discharged in August, 1944. He attempted to complete his education at Ballard High School, but left after two weeks. ==Career==

Gilkey worked a succession of jobs, including sailor, ranch hand, and logger, A private tour of the Seattle Art Museum offered by assistant director Ed Thomas had a profound effect on him, leaving him particularly moved by the works of Guy Anderson, Morris Graves, and Mark Tobey. With their encouragement, he opened a studio in Seattle's Skid Road area. In 1948 a $1,000 inheritance from his grandmother allowed him to spend four months touring the great museums of Europe; he was especially impressed by the works of Rembrandt, Francisco Goya, and Vincent van Gogh. Returning to Seattle, he spent the next few years developing his painting style while living in a small apartment with fellow painter Leo Kenney. He also became a fixture at the Blue Moon Tavern, the locus of Seattle's 'Beat' counterculture, near the University of Washington. In 1954 Gilkey, William Ivey, Ward Corley, and Jack Stangle were featured in a four-man show at the Seattle Art Museum. In 1958 a Guggenheim Fellowship allowed him to spend a year traveling and studying in Europe. He spent several months in Ireland and Italy, and had a memorable, spontaneous encounter with Pablo Picasso and his wife, Jacqueline Roque. Although he now avoided barroom brawling, Gilkey remained a temperamental figure, well known for his disputes with gallery owners, curators, and critics, and for his dislike of the 'gallery system'. The first independent show of Gilkey's work, mounted by his longtime friend Janet Huston, took place in March 1977, at a space in downtown Seattle. After Seattle Post-Intelligencer art critic Richard Campbell expressed disapproval of his use of a private agent, an outraged Gilkey appeared at the newspaper's office, gave Campbell a tongue lashing, and overturned his desk before stalking out An automobile accident while on vacation in New Mexico in December 1984 left Gilkey with several crushed vertebrae. He was unable to paint for three years. Two years after that, his new works, representing his explorations of the nature of consciousness, were shown at Janet Huston's newly opened gallery in the Skagit Valley, and were greeted with critical acclaim, good sales, and an award from the Governor of the State of Washington. On a day in early November that he described as "the best and the worst day of my life," Gilkey, 64, was named grand prize winner of the Osaka Triennale 1990 Exhibition, a juried competition with 30,000 entries from around the world. At 4 a.m. the same day, a levee on the Skagit River broke, flooding his Fir Island studio. Gilkey had to row a skiff out to his house to pick up a coat and the acceptance speech he'd written to fax to Osaka. ==Death==

In September 1997, Gilkey, who was already having heart trouble, was diagnosed with lung cancer. Shortly after the diagnosis, he drove to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Some time before noon on Friday, October 3, 1997, ==References==