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it's winter, time to visit dreamwidth
Jan. 22nd, 2026 09:54 amYesterday morning I was up very early to take R to the airport. She's headed to New Orleans for a vacation with friends and asked me about recommendations- I haven't been there in 30 years, and aside from well known landmarks, I had nothing specific. I shared some memories of magic and misadventure. I hope she has a lovely visit, finds gluten free beignets and lots of music.
I've been thinking more than usual about 30 years ago because R asked me about New Orleans back then and also because of this sad news:
Two weeks ago, I heard Kevin Kadar died. He was just about the first friend I made in Portland in 1995. I saw him in the Park Blocks opening up an antique travel inkwell and walked over to ask him about it: I found out that he was also dedicated to traveling and drawing on an extremely small and precarious budget (he did it longer, and better.) We ended up drinking coffee and chatting about art late into the evening, and he even gave me a painting, which I managed to keep safe in my backpack, eventually had framed and which I still have. Not long after that, because of that random meeting, everything changed for me. I think Kevin was a catalyst and/or mentor for many artists in Portland.
He loved to paint, he lived to paint, really. His hand, evident in his brushstrokes and his handwriting both (omg he had the most beautiful handwriting) managed to be both elegant and deliberate and raw, immediate. Very few painters can manage that now. He'd live incredibly frugally, saving up until he could travel to Europe, then stay in squats in Paris and stay as long as he could, meeting other artists and visiting his favorite painters' works in museums. I remember him once telling me about spending an entire day in the Corot rooms in the Louvre.
I hadn't seen him for a long time when word came online that people were worried about him. Nobody had been able to reach him, and I guess he'd been dealing with health problems for quite a while. And then the news that he was gone.
I have two of my old sketchbooks open to drawings I made of him that summer. They're still out on my desk, I haven't wanted to put them away.
Oregon Arts Watch memorial post about Kevin
I've been thinking more than usual about 30 years ago because R asked me about New Orleans back then and also because of this sad news:
Two weeks ago, I heard Kevin Kadar died. He was just about the first friend I made in Portland in 1995. I saw him in the Park Blocks opening up an antique travel inkwell and walked over to ask him about it: I found out that he was also dedicated to traveling and drawing on an extremely small and precarious budget (he did it longer, and better.) We ended up drinking coffee and chatting about art late into the evening, and he even gave me a painting, which I managed to keep safe in my backpack, eventually had framed and which I still have. Not long after that, because of that random meeting, everything changed for me. I think Kevin was a catalyst and/or mentor for many artists in Portland.
He loved to paint, he lived to paint, really. His hand, evident in his brushstrokes and his handwriting both (omg he had the most beautiful handwriting) managed to be both elegant and deliberate and raw, immediate. Very few painters can manage that now. He'd live incredibly frugally, saving up until he could travel to Europe, then stay in squats in Paris and stay as long as he could, meeting other artists and visiting his favorite painters' works in museums. I remember him once telling me about spending an entire day in the Corot rooms in the Louvre.
I hadn't seen him for a long time when word came online that people were worried about him. Nobody had been able to reach him, and I guess he'd been dealing with health problems for quite a while. And then the news that he was gone.
I have two of my old sketchbooks open to drawings I made of him that summer. They're still out on my desk, I haven't wanted to put them away.
Oregon Arts Watch memorial post about Kevin
