Physician-artist Kime exhibits “A Life of Art” at Brandstater Gallery

“I’ve pursued both equally seriously,” said Kime, age 87 and a pathologist who previously conducted a large pathology residency program at Kettering Medical Center in Ohio. “The idea of art being a hobby or a fling didn’t happen. I was into art as ever I was into medicine,” he said. 

On Mon., Nov. 28, Kime opened a retrospective exhibit of his artwork at La Sierra University’s Brandstater Gallery in a show titled “A Life of Art.” It constitutes Kime’s second exhibit in approximately 70 years and features his flash sketches of former classmates, professors and colleagues, watercolor landscapes and oil portraits of LLU’s faculty. An artist’s reception and talk was held to formally open the exhibit which will run through Dec. 15.

In 1948 at the age of 19 he graduated from La Sierra College, now La Sierra University, and was accepted into the LLU School of Medicine. Subsequent education in internal medicine included studies at Harvard University and Washington University in St. Louis. Along the way he switched gears to specialize in pathology and became board certified. He served academically at LLU’s medical school and then at Kettering Medical Center from 1976 to 1994. All the while he continued a practice he undertook as a youth, of drawing quick caricatures in 15 – 90 seconds of classmates, friends, instructors, colleagues and strangers, filling note paper and anything else he could draw on with the likenesses of those immediately within view. Over the course of 70 years he amassed a collection of thousands of so-called flash drawings, some of which are represented in a recently published hard cover book titled “70 Years of Flash Sketches of People.”

“Through it all I was an artist,” says Kime. “[However], I never felt comfortable in either circle. I’ve been a man without a home.”

With only a semester of Otis Art Institute night classes and a previous art course at Occidential College under his belt, Kime is largely a self-taught artist. His artistic knowledge is grounded by his childhood study of the large collection of art books kept by his mother during his growing up years in the San Fernando Valley. “I got a hold of those when I was 6 or 7 and started copying them,” he said. He also gained knowledge from art technical and reference books, art instruction videos and museum field trips. As a teenager he exhibited his first art show. His current exhibit at Brandstater Gallery is his second.

Kime’s work is based on what he sees with his literal rather than his inner eye. “I was drawing what I saw, not what I imagined,” he said. Later he segued from flash drawings of people into a 20-year stretch painting watercolor landscapes, mainly urban scenes in St. Louis and Southern California coastal and inland regions. This was followed by a stint beginning in 1964 painting portraits and working in oils. In 1995, following his retirement and while living in Ohio, he began participating in the Cincinnati Art Club’s twice-weekly live model sessions, a practice he continued for 12 years and which brought him into contact with other artists. Over the years he produced an extensive portfolio of 450 portraits including more than 60 of Loma Linda University faculty painted between 2003 and 2013. Most of the LLU portraits were based on short, videoed interviews with his subjects.

“On my own, by reading, I figured out how to make finished portraits,” Kime said.

Kime’s artistic work is now captured in four books highlighting his oil portraits, watercolor landscapes, and thousands of flash sketches.

Brandstater Gallery is located in La Sierra’s Visual Art Center. The gallery is open Mon. - Wed., 10 a.m-5 p.m., and Thurs., 12-7 p.m. For further information, call 951-785-2170. La Sierra University is located at 4500 Riverwalk Parkway, Riverside, Calif., 92515. A campus map is available at https://lasierra.edu/campus-map/