Artist portrays city landmarks

“Life is what you make of it,” says Keith McDaniel, 80.

Surrounded by his brightly colored and richly detailed artwork, McDaniel proves that reinvention has no limits.

For the past 12 years, this cheerful man with blue eyes has created what he calls “three-dimensional diversified” painting/sculpture using bits of paper and paint. He specializes in re-creating Spokane landmarks, such as the Flour Mill and the Manito Park gazebo.

McDaniel wasn’t always a man with a brush in his hand.

Born in Spokane in 1927, he took care of his widowed mother and disabled sister. A North Central High School graduate, he entered the Navy in 1945, serving in the Pacific aboard the USS Bunker Hill aircraft carrier.

Back home, he became an escrow manager at Old National Bank. He also worked at Boeing Co., as a security guard at Swedish Hospital in Seattle and as a boat rigger/mechanic for Carsten’s Marine in Spokane Valley.

McDaniel has outlived his entire family.

“I consider myself an orphan,” he joked recently in the sunny common room at the Manito Garden Apartments, his home the past 15 years. He “abdicated” much of his life to care for family members and others, he said, adding, “You don’t necessarily own your own life at times.”

Because his mother couldn’t afford art class supplies, McDaniel received no formal art training. But with a keen eye for detail and an innate grasp of composition, he began letting his inner artist out upon returning to Spokane in 1983.

Initially, he painted window signs during Christmas, but the cold weather “was too hard on the fingers,” so he switched to fliers and posters, then art pieces.

Displaying mostly bright primary and secondary colors, McDaniel’s art combines brushwork, watercolor, draftsmanlike pen and ink, poster paint and snippets from magazines. On broad backgrounds, he places intricate facsimiles of his subjects. Blue sky and a smiling sun are a frequent motif.

The resourcefulness and complexity in McDaniel’s art – like that of his life – aren’t immediately obvious. The viewer must peer closely at McDaniel’s painting of the Riverfront Park Carrousel to see tiny layered horses rendered in exquisite detail or study another work closely to discover that its lightning is pencil-line-thin rolled paper.

Each work takes two to three months to complete.

McDaniel also used a Spokesman-Review photo to re-create the “Albers Rolled Oats” sign on the Frederick Hotel at Division and Main.

His playfulness is pervasive.

At the bottom of one painting, Charlie the Tuna pokes out of a stream under a cobbled bridge bearing a plate reading “Gurgle More Brook.” Mount Rainier floats like a cloud in cornflower sky behind the Space Needle. And his Kool Kat logo, a hep cat in sunglasses, wears an earring.

McDaniel says his favorite artist is Frederick Remington, but he also is drawn to Jackson Pollock’s freewheeling style.

According to Laurie Bradley, service coordinator of the Manito Garden Apartments, this “shy artist” is always smiling. “He’s fun-loving and has a great personality.”

McDaniel says he would like to sell his work but can’t afford to print business cards or have prints made. He longs to exhibit his work and see it gain recognition.

In his upbeat way, McDaniel sums up how he continues to grow artistically: “I might get discouraged and say, ‘Phooey, that don’t look good at all,’ … but then I’ll just do something else.”