Kathy Sanders

Kathy Sanders didn’t set out to be a painter. Thirteen years ago, she had a comfortable job at the Oklahoma City IRS office and a happy home where she lived with her husband, daughter Edye and grandsons Chase and Colton. But after Kathy’s life was turned upside down on April 19, 1995, painting became a source of comfort that helped her find meaning in tragedy.

On that sunny Wednesday in Oklahoma City, Kathy’s morning routine was rocked by an explosion in a nearby building that sent shattered glass flying onto the streets below her office. She writes in her book After Oklahoma City that after stepping outside to try to locate the source of the blast, she and her daughter—who worked in the same building—were about to turn back inside when they realized that the cloud of black smoke filling the sky was coming from the Alfred P. Murragh building. With growing panic, they ran toward the building and discovered that the entire north side of the structure—where Chase’s and Colton’s daycare center was housed—was gone.

Kathy’s life was changed in an instant. “I never went back to work. I didn’t want to sit at my desk and look out the window at the place where the boys died,” she says. The deaths of her grandsons, followed by her husband, who died just two years later of pancreatic cancer, created feelings of anger and bitterness that were profoundly difficult to overcome. “My faith and my values system were shaken,” she says. “I thought, ‘I don’t understand this, but, God, I’m going to have to trust you.’”

As she struggled to cope with her grief, comfort came from an unexpected source. “After the bombing, a lady came to our family and said, ‘would you mind if I paint a picture of Chase and Colton as little angels?’” Now a treasured family keepsake, the painting sparked an interest that would lead Kathy to a new career. “We had a whole world of people who reached out to love our family and do nice things for us” she says. “I wanted to give back in some way.” And although she had never painted before, Kathy felt driven to give it a try. “After the bombing, for the first time in my life, I had the opportunity to do anything I wanted to do,” she reflects.

She began studying painting with respected artists around the United States, and when a new marriage brought her to Arkansas, she decided to pursue art as a career. For Kathy, painting isn’t just about self-expression; it’s about touching others’ lives. She’s now frequently commissioned to do pieces that represent her clients’ significant moments—scenes from family vacations, portraits of lost loved ones and landscapes that evoke happy times. “I’ve had the opportunity to do a lot of wonderful paintings for people that mean something to them,” she says. For example, interior designer Tom Chandler of Chandler & Associates in Little Rock commissioned Kathy to create a painting of a New Orleans street car for a Hurricane Katrina survivor’s home.

Kathy’s pieces, available at Stephano’s Fine Art Gallery in Little Rock and her own studio, The Art Gallery in North Little Rock, reflect the broad range of styles she has studied. Though her subjects are diverse—religious images, European landscapes, portraits, musical instruments and wildlife—her pieces are unified by her warm color palettes and romantic style. “I feel my paintings,” she says. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a portrait or a landscape. I just paint what I feel.”
 
Through her latest works, Kathy continues her commitment to give back through art. Her piece The Hungry Boy recently won a submission contest to be featured on promotional materials for the Arkansas Foodbank Network’s Empty Bowls art auction fundraiser. Additionally, she is working on a series of paintings for Feed the Children, an Oklahoma City-based nonprofit organization that provides food, medicine and other relief to hungry children and families around the world.

Though Kathy started painting to give to others, she has gotten something in return. “When I wake up in the morning I’m excited about what I’m doing,” she says. “I’m excited about the projects I’m working on, and I when I lay my head down at night, I feel like I’ve accomplished something.”