Local Artist Paints Her Life Story with Brushes and Words

“The innate need to create is a jealous, persistent, and even nagging companion,” Linda Hyatt Cancel said in her latest work, a memoir entitled “1959 Lark.” A departure from her normal creative work of painting with a brush, Cancel said she employs her words to illustrate the seasons of her life.

Throughout her memoir, Cancel details her formative years and family history in Northport and Kettle Falls during the ’50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s. The “nagging companion” she refers to as creativity showed up in earnest for Cancel at the age of 12 when her mother secured a spot for her in an oil painting class taught by Mr. William F. Pogue. According to Cancel, Pogue, a retired commercial artist, became a well-known, local personality of that era. His class, held in the room behind Clem’s Appliance Store in Kettle Falls, was the original catalyst behind her pursuit of art.

“I started painting at age 12 but it wasn’t until my youngest child was a year old and the three older ones were in school that I actually began my artistic career,” Cancel said. “I knew how to paint but I didn’t understand the business, I didn’t even know where to begin, so I just started entering shows. I entered a local art show at a bank in Lawrence, South Carolina, and started getting immediate recognition through awards for my work and requests to teach. From there it was fast learning – trial by fire, as they say.”

Transitioning into the written word via her book “’59 Lark,” Cancel admitted, “I don’t consider myself a writer, I’m more of a storyteller. I really don’t like the act of writing – it hurts my brain.” But, she said, the need to share her family’s story – the grace and dignity with which they handled the terrible loss of a child, the comforts of her formative years woven into the fabric of this landscape and its people, and the stories of her development as an artist – outweighed any reluctance to put pen to paper. “I wrote it for myself,” she said, “but I also wrote it in hopes that others may be able to connect the dots of their own special stories.” 

One of Cancel’s “special stories” that she details in her book is that of her Santa Claus paintings. “It began when the vice president of sales at Hall Printing in High Point, North Carolina – the company handling my art prints – requested me to paint his portrait. That’s where it all started, and, from there, took on a much bigger life of its own,” she explained. 

For more information, visit lindahyattcancel.com.