Kate Gallagher
Painting
As the only daughter of a hearty gillnetter and a bookish bookkeeper from Ladner, BC, whose laissez-faire parenting philosophy unintentionally fostered a freewheeling atmosphere of Anything Goes, Kate was systematically terrorized by her adopted older brother, who owed his superior place in the family to the fact that her mother suffered from what can only be characterized as hysterical barrenness, a condition which lifted like a fog over the Fraser once the couple had finally forsaken conception and taken Tony in as their otherbegotten son.
Married at 16 to a predictibly narcisistic boyfriend of 21 who knocked her up, kicked her in the stomach during pregnancy, and ultimately absconded with their two children shortly after their inevitable divorce, Kate emigrated to Vancouver in her 20s to seek her fortune as a hotwalker at Hastings Racecourse ("Bred For Excitement") and later delivering, among other things, automobile parts for WL Jones (now defunct) and delicious snacks and sandwiches at Davie Street's Rembrandt Hotel beer parlour (now another Sandman).
It was there she first encountered her current husband and ongoing project, who is writing this while Kate rests fitfully in their windswept bedroom-near the banks of the north arm of the very same Fraser from whence her father had plucked a living back in the Pre-Tunnel Days of Yesteryear and Salmon-For-All- dreaming no doubt of her many adventures across her home and native Canada, throughout the US (where she began painting during a 5-year stint in Hawaii) and in the People's Republic of China (commonly known as China, where she mastered the art of painting while surviving), while all the time living and working variously as a fulltime on-site mother of Patchen, a community cable TV host, an ENT medical office assistant, and a health magnet pyramid-schemer.
Today, buoyed by little more than unquenchable painterly desire, the hard-won wisdom of her mistakes, and the moral support and good wishes of her language-teaching spouse and passionate cheffing son, Kate dedicates herself to providing Opus Framing & Art Supplies with a compelling reason to continue stocking and selling all the oilpaint, brushes and canvas it does, by painstakingly transferring carefully chosen colour from their plentiful shelves to your hungry eye with the optimistic aspiration that it will all come out hopefully in the end.
Contact Information
Telephone: (604) 432-6973
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