Artist Dory Hicks: A retrospective

Dory Hicks knew she was an artist when she was five years old, and she’s been painting life around her since.

While her images are entwined with community life in Skamokawa, Hicks has also painted moments in the world history that spoke to her, such as the joy she saw when Nelson Mandela was released from prison.

“I was intrigued by the energy at Mandela’s release,” she said of her painting as she gave a tour through a retrospective exhibit at Redmen Hall in Skamokawa.

Community members loaned work for the exhibit since a fire about five years ago destroyed Hicks’ home and her favorite paintings.

A spark from a fire built in the morning because “the kitties liked to lie there” ignited a shingle on the roof, and as Hicks says, “the place went up in no time.” Wes Hicks saved the cats and some office files before he narrowly escaped falling pieces of the burning roof.

Firemen saved some of Hicks’ collection of other artists’ work, but her own paintings and family mementos were lost. One of her favorites featured a pianist. She had given a copy to a friend, who’s planning to return the work.

“It was very sad, but what are you going to do?" she said. "You start over.”

The watercolors are filled with local people and history. Subjects include Spoonie’s Seafoods, the women at Crown Zellerbach’s Family Camp putting clothes on the line, the River City Strippers quilting club, and various images of Skamokawa’s waterfront.

Hicks came to the area with her husband, Wes Hicks, a forester who was a manager for Crown, who died four years ago of pancreatic cancer. The couple raised seven sons and a daughter at Family Camp, which she said was “nothing but trees and hard work.”

Hicks’ paintings were part of Friends of Skamokawa’s annual reviews in the early 1990’s. Her image of the Skamokawa waterfront is popular on tote bags and aprons, docent Pam Emery said.

A course of study at the Chicago Institute of art was cut short when Hicks fell off a wall during a life drawing class and ruptured her spleen, an injury that took a year to heal. Hicks studied with Charles Mulvey and Eric Weigardt after she moved to Washington.

Beach Walkers is her favorite painting in the show.

“There’s not much there--just one of those nights," she said. "It’s foggy; there’s a man and his dogs.”

The exhibit, showing at Redmen Hall through March 20th, has given the community a chance to honor Hicks, who said seeing all the people at the opening was a high point in her career.