Name/Title
Western Park Apartments - Chieko Lafferty - De Kooning Woman - 2019Description
Chieko Lafferty
“DeKooning Woman”
Western Park Apartments
The ebullient Chieko Lafferty, born in Kyoto, Japan, worked as an accountant. However, here dreams always led to art. After an apprenticeship, she began designing Western-style fabric patterns. Ten years later, she decided to visit the United States before settling down, but in San Francisco she met Jack, a dashing Scot, to whom she has now been married 36 years.
Chieko takes fine arts classes while continuing to work as a bookkeeper. She loves to draw, and enjoys painting still lifes, but her favorite is figure drawing. She regularly returns to the classics to check her technique. “If you can draw a circle, cylinder, box, you can draw,” Chieko explains. “The basics are so important. Sometimes it’s boring – another white bowl! But then you can go anywhere.”
Chieko enjoys reading in Japanese and murder mysteries in English, cooking all cuisines, listening to classical music, and taking walks. More than anything else, she is constantly exploring, seeking to develop her style. “There are rules, but rules are for breaking,” she laughs. “I love that!” For example, she will refigure classical compositions with a cubist technique and use origami paper for collage. “If I paint something and everyone says, ‘That’s Chieko’, that is what I want.”
ART WITH ELDERS
2019 27th Annual Art With Elders Exhibit
