Artwork copyright Kay Lamoreux Buckner. Photo courtesy of Washington State Arts Commission, 2016.

City Hills, 1991

Kay Lamoreux Buckner
American (born 1935, died 2012)

Location: Senator Jamie Pedersen's Office, Olympia

About the Artwork

Artist Kay Lamoreux Buckner based the painting City Hills on memories of her childhood in Seattle. She notes, "The vantage point is our front porch. My intention was to evoke the spirit of our multi-level neighborhood as it appeared to me when I was small. Consequently, I used an exaggerated 'bird's eye' perspective, because that is the way I remember its soaring slopes. The painting's composition balances three elements: a porch's simple planes, the modeled figures of a woman and young girl, and the patterned backdrop of urban hills."

This artwork was acquired for the State Art Collection in partnership with Washington State Senate.

About the Artist

Northwest artist Kay Lamoreux Buckner (1935-2012) created figurative paintings and drawings with rich psychological imagery. In the 1990s she began to create textile artworks.

Kay Lamoreux Buckner was born and raised in Seattle. She graduated from Lincoln High School, the University of Washington (Bachelor of Art degree in Fine Art, 1958), and Claremont Graduate School in California (Master of Fine Art degree in painting, 1961). Kay was awarded the Rotary Award for Painting at The Northwest Arts and Crafts Fair (1955) in Bellevue, and she was included in Seattle Art Museum's 42nd Annual Juried Exhibition of Northwest Artists (1956). She moved to Eugene, Oregon in 1962, where she had a studio for the rest of her life and taught at the University of Oregon. The Frye Art Museum in Seattle held a solo exhibition of her paintings in 1979.