Spanning the Centuries

What do two women born 100 years apart have in common? Quite a bit it turns out. Pam Ingalls and Abby Williams Hill, painters both, Islanders too, are women of immeasurable talent with an overwhelming desire to travel. Pam will be giving a talk on Thursday, March 22, 7:00 p.m. at the Land Trust building; Pam Ingalls: Wanderlust, How Travel Influences Art.

Abby Williams Hill whose work is on exhibit at Vashon-Maury Island Heritage Museum: Abby Williams Hill: Wanderlust, Works on Paper 1895 – 1927, was inspired by her travels in the U.S. and in Europe. Pam, as many of you know, is a prolific painter whose work adorns the walls of the Hardware Store Restaurant. She, too, has been influenced by her wanderings and feels like a kindred spirit with Abby. I met with Pam recently over a cup of coffee and Café Luna when she told me she felt connected to Abby. "I truly feel akin to her. I even went to places on Vashon that she painted. I revisited and painted what she painted and felt like I was in another century".

Over a century ago, Abby left the mid-west to travels to the Wild West, to paint Vashon, virgin landscapes and Sioux Indians. What’s so interesting about Pam is she made the decision, some years ago, to leave her rural, though cosmopolitan environs, to travel to small communities around the globe and paint portraits of 50 members within that community. Like Abby, she, too, painted portraits within an Indian tribe, but this time it was near Nome, Alaska, and it was the King Island tribe. She also painted portraits of Guatemalans, Jamaicans, and then had quite a unique idea. Pam chose a HUD apartment complex in New York City and painted portraits of 50 tenants living in the building, living in a community within a community.

"Doing the portraits has really been a culmination for me," Pam told me. "I have a chance to learn more about portraits, I get to travel, and become intimate with small groups of people. You know in life how everything seems to come together to a specific point? This is how I feel about my portrait project. I’m traveling and painting. My work really is a labor of love." Perhaps if Abby Williams Hill were alive today she would express the same sentiments as Pam.

Pam’s next trip took her all the way to Shillong, India where she painted portraits of the Kashi people. I asked Pam how her travels had influence her painting style. She said, "Changes are probably unconscious. If anything, it would be the colors in my palette that change from country to country. My paintings are brighter in some places like Jamaica - a place rich and saturated with color. But the Kashi people, they dressed in calico, western wear – weren’t the bright, traditional colors of India. And the brown hills, I suppose, muted my palette in Shillong."

Funded by a 4 Culture grant, Pam will open a new show at The Hardware Store Restaurant on First Friday in May titled, "Facing India", exhibiting portraits from her recent trip to Shillong. And we can see how the centuries run together when she introduces fellow world wanderer Abby Williams Hill’s hundred year old drawings at her talk; Pam Ingalls: Wanderlust, How Travel Influences Art on. Together, these two women truly are kindred spirits whose lust for travel infuses their art with timelessness and beauty.