Getting to Know 2018 Winning Artist, Doreen Koch Allen
Doreen Koch Allen is best known for her exuberant, intuitive and color-infused paintings. Doreen’s goal in any piece of art is to bring a sense of joy to the observer through an authentic connection of beauty through nature. She sees parallels between gardener and artist, as both create something from nothing: an empty plot of soil for the gardener, a blank canvas for the artist. Seed catalogs in February, visits to neighborhood garden centers and garden tours like West Seattle Garden Tour, inspire the gardener. Artists like Doreen find inspiration from forest walks, absorbing the spectrum of color, texture and patterns found in nature.
Doreen, described as a “painterly” artist, saturates the canvas and then continues with a subtractive process. As a gardener weeds and an orchardist thins, the artist removes things that don’t work. Like a gardener will encourage fellow enthusiasts to step closer to enjoy a delicate fragrance or tiny bloom, Doreen invites the observer to move closer to enjoy hidden elements that are delicate, veiled and not easily seen.
Raised in British Columbia, daughter of avid gardeners, Doreen has always been inspired by the beauty around her. She is a fulltime artist selling her floral, landscape, abstract and botanical pieces online, was an Art Docent with the Interurban Center for the Arts through Green River College, and still finds time to garden vegetables and perennials and raise chickens on her five-acre wooded estate in Edgewood. Doreen’s painting, Garden Fantasia, graces the cover of the 2018 West Seattle Garden Tour ticket book and will be available for purchase during the Silent Auction on Sunday, June 24, during the garden tour.
West Seattle Garden Tour is proud to be affiliated with this talented northwest artist.
If you would like to explore Doreen’s many art forms, check out these websites.
Margy Stover has been volunteering with West Seattle Garden Tour for 10 years, most recently as the garden description writer for the ticket booklet. She is a retired teacher and Master Gardener. Margy loves teaching writing and taught writing assessment to teachers for many years. She enjoys gardening and interviewing gardeners.