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For as long as she can remember, her grandfather’s vintage fishing boat has laid at anchor on the Knik Flats, in clear view of the homestead where Lisa Redington spent much of her childhood.
By the time she was a teen-ager, Redington decided to capture on canvas the memory of the vessel, the Nomad, and happy memories of time spent with her grandparents, Joe Redington Sr. and Violet Redington.
Lisa Redington, who was raised in Knik, was inspired by her artistic mother, Kathleen, and began drawing at the age of nine, mostly wildlife sketches and cartoons. Growing up she listened to public television art instruction by renown oil painters William Alexander and Bob Ross, They too inspired her work, she said.
She picked up her first oil paints and brushes and began doing scenes. She also experimented with a variety of other art forms, everything from glass etching and charcoals to pastels. It wasn’t until 2001, at age 29, that she felt ready to take on the Nomad project.
The young artist walked out onto Knik Goose Bay Road on a sunny, late summer day in 2001, and photographed the Nomad. Then she set about recreating the photo on a 20 by 24 inch canvas, a birthday gift from her mother. “I think it took me about 11 hours to paint it,” she said. “It was a few hours here and a few hours there. I painted it for about a week. It takes a while for oil paints to dry. The reaction was good. “People really liked it, so I decided to make prints out of it.”
She had prints professionally done and shrink wrapped, with the story of the Nomad attached. The Nomad was built in the early 1950s specially for Turnagain Arm. Builder Bob Matheson and his brother used it for several years before selling it to Joe Redington Sr. and Violet. The Redingtons were looking for a fishing boat, so Joe Sr. replaced the cabin on board with a hold for fish. And used it for fishing until the day they dry docked it on the Knik Flats.
“I like scenery, people and animals,” said Redington, who wants to move into a fulltime career in art, preferably in oils.
“ I like to draw sketches and stuff too, but I really enjoy oils,” she said. “I’d like to paint something with the Sleeping Lady (Mt. Susitna) or Hatcher Pass in the background,” she said. She is setting up a studio at her home in Wasilla and hopes now that her career will begin to thrive.
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