Articles
A varied trail to Cambria
MODEL, WRITER,
PAINTER COMES
FROM ARIZONA
VIA N.Y. AND L.A.
BY LEE SUTTER
THE CAMBRIAN
A gallery owner thinks that Kitty Brophy is the cat's meow. "I love her work," says Jeanne McCrary, co-owner of Firewalk Gallery in San Luis Obispo. "I love that it's things you can recognize, but she makes them own. She's so creative."
Brophy's large, vibrant watercolor paintings of Southwestern rock formations, cactus, coastal bluffs, flowers, and trees have been exhibited and purchased in California, Colorado and New Mexico.
"I just sold one today," said McCrary shortly before the new year. Firewalk is in the Creamery courtyard, 570 Higuera St. Brophy's work will continue being shown there, with pieces periodically being replaced, through March.
The artist's vivid paintings reflect her past. "She had a very colorful life," McCrary remarks.
Brophy moved to Cambria three years ago from Los Angeles, but most of her adulthood was spent in New York, where she moved in 1978, right out of high school, to study illustration at Parsons School of Design. In the Big Apple, Brophy says she was "part of the New York art scene." She left after a dozen years, because "New York had changed. Those of us who didn't die, we all went to other places."
The "other place" Brophy initially choose was Los Angeles.
Although she was born in the Golden State, she was raised in Arizona.Her writer father and artist mother encouraged her talents in both fields, so what she didn't come by genetically, she got through exposaure. "All of their friends were artists and writers," including many women artists to provide role models for the budding youngster.
With her tall, lanky build and good looks, she became a successful fashion model in New York, and put her artistic talents on hold for many more yeas. Brophy says she hit a "huge dry spell" in art where nothing came to her visually. Plus, she hated Parsons, she says, where her particular style and use of color was discouraged. Also, men seemed to rule the art scene on the East Coast. "I prefer being an artist out here, because there isn't really that gender differentiation," says Brophy.
But gender was a helpful factor in another career, As a model, in addition to posing for artists, she worked for the Ford agency and says she was "picked up by an agent in Paris," becoming a bit of a jet-setter.
In the meantime, her life as a fine artist took the slow train.
Even though she'd put painting aside, Brophy poured her creative juices into writing, especially short stories and screen plays.
She was glad to trade the numbing winters of New York of sunny California. She warmed up during the six years she spent in Los Angeles, involved in television production. Unlike most people who can't wait to leave the smoggy Southland, Brophy says she liked it there, having a good time with friends, living in a nice neighborhood near Griffith Park.
But, bent on enhancing her skills, she left to attend UC Santa Cruz, earning an undergraduate degree in creative writing. The coastal small town and the alternative lifestyle really spoiled her, she says, and she searched all over California for something comparable before she came across Cambria. Here, Brophy bought an older house that was designed by local architect Taylor Linzey.
After such a fast-paced life, the pines could seem dull to someone like Brophy, but no, she loves it here. "After a certain age," she says, dull doesn't look so bad.
Among other praises that McCrary sings of Brophy, she mentions her special sense of humor. "She's very bright, very wry."
And, after a 15-year hiatus from painting, Brophy's juices are flowing again after she moved to Cambria, encouraged by her boyfriend, whom she met at the beach.
In spite of only putting her energy into either writing or painting, never both, she's always taken photographs. Brophy also sells photo cards at Firewalk, of East West Ranch, Morro Bay, Big Sur, and she need not go far to capture breathtaking scenes, she says. "Sometimes I just go up to my roof and take pictures of sunsets."
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