“I’ve probably had a different journey to art than most artists,” says oil painter Lauri Ketchum, in what is actually a monumental understatement. “As a kid, I liked art and had an artistic brother, but I played basketball. I had nothing to do with art, didn’t pursue it whatsoever.”
Ketchum’s decidedly uncreative path continued during her college years. “In college I thought, ‘I’ve got to do something that leads to a good job,’ so I went into accounting, which I always hated but which offered good career options,” she says.
Three years after earning a degree in accounting from Oklahoma State University in 1985, Ketchum married Roger, who was working in collections at John Deere. “I don’t tell this to a lot of people,” Ketchum confesses sheepishly, “but I worked for the Internal Revenue Service. Nobody likes to hear that! When we first started out, I was a revenue agent doing auditing and my husband worked for John Deere, in collections. We feared the day that we would end up together on somebody’s poor ranch, with me to audit them and him to collect—to drive their tractor off.”
Read the full article in the March/April 2025 issue.
Smoke Show
oil
12″ by 16″
Me and My Shadow
oil
12″ by 12″
