Local artist’s illustrious career of work on display in Kingston

Kim Drew of Kingston, who has had an illustrious career working for publications ranging from The New York Times to Playboy, is displaying and selling many of his works at the Village Green Community Center through Dec. 26.

“The purpose of this show…was to sell out my artwork, everything that I can to clear out the studio and also my head so I don’t feel obligated by what I’ve done in the past,” Drew said. “I just looked at it as an opportunity to get my artwork out there.”

Drew, who moved to Jefferson Beach about six years ago, said the work is a mix of old and new paintings and drawings and are often of things he has seen while traveling. Even though he’s sad to let some of them go, it’s important for some of his older works to find new people to appreciate them. “They can speak to people in different ways,” he said.

Drew grew up in Issaquah where he first gained a passion for the arts. He recalled his first-grade teacher being impressed with his finger painting of a tree and holding it up for the entire class to see.

“I realized, ‘Oh my, I get adulation here,’” he said. “I wasn’t so good at other things like math. It was easy to do the art. I was getting compliments, and that’s what kept me going. I got seeped in it.”

As he started looking deeper into the arts, one of his first inspirations was Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh. Drew described his work as mystifying. “I was wondering why anyone would paint that; I was just so curious. Eventually, it turned into art school.”

Initially, Drew started at the University of Washington but said he didn’t fit into their graphic program. “I didn’t understand what I was doing; I was crushed.” His big breakthrough came when he was accepted into the Burnley School of Art on Capitol Hill, which later turned into the Art Institute of Seattle and closed in 2019. Drew was close to graduating when two artists from Los Angeles came up to show their portfolios from the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena. He was faced with a career-altering decision.

“I was so impressed that I just dropped everything and said I got to get into this art center,” he said.

Drew ended up graduating from ACD and then moved to New York City to get his master’s degree from the School of Visual Arts. Drew said he was getting a lot of backlash from friends and family.

“Everyone was trying to talk me out of it; my dad, my family,” he said. “I wasn’t getting much support making a living off of art. I don’t think I was extraordinarily talented, I just liked it. I just wanted to see what I could make, it was exciting. I was charged by the excitement.”

Drew’s first job out of art school was doing illustrations for publications such as the Bellevue Journal American, The Rocket (music magazine) and Seattle Weekly. His freelance work expanded to the East Coast with publications like the Democrat and Chronicle out of Rochester, NY and magazines like Money and Seventeen. With Drew now being on the East Coast and his illustrations making waves through the industry, he was able to work for the New York Times, which he did for a few years in the mid-1980s.

“Back then, an artist could make an appointment to show their portfolio,” Drew recalled. “I had experience in newspapers so it seemed like the natural step for me. The turnaround time was really fast, you had one day to do (illustrations). It worked out pretty well. I went into the newsroom several times. I felt really full of myself. It was prestigious to be an artist for the New York Times. It just kept me going.”

Though Drew only did one assignment with them, he said his experience doing an illustration for Playboy magazine was quite a thrill. He even got invited to the Playboy Mansion where he met founder Hugh Hefner, along with plenty of Bunnies.

“I was just like ‘wow.’ I wasn’t even drinking, and I was lit up because there were Bunnies all around. It was more than my eyes could bear,” Drew said.

As for the future, Drew said he could see himself having another local showing in a few years once he gets his new batch of work done.

“You never really retire from art. It’s always in your mind whether you’re producing it or not. The next round of work is going to be on my homestead here,” he said, adding he has chickens, a cat and a dog. “They bring me so much joy. They always say to paint what you love.”