CLEVELAND, Tenn. — Some are in the basement. Others are under the bed.
A select few paintings grace the walls of Carol Kong’s home, but only the ones that no one else wants.
To her, it’s a private gallery. Sometimes, when family and friends express interest, she’ll give away her meadows and mountains, her evergreen forests and sun-kissed shores.
Perhaps you’ve seen her watercolors hanging in the Cleveland Bradley County Public Library or the Chattanooga airport, or maybe at a show in San Francisco or displayed in a Washington, D.C. apartment. Perhaps you’ve never heard her name.
Ms. Kong grew up in West Virginia, became a parent in Arizona and moved to Cleveland in 1989.
Although she loved to draw, starting as a 5-year-old copying the newspaper comics, when motherhood embraced her three times over she put away her pens and pencils to focus on her children. Then on Christmas morning 1979, Ms. Kong’s son gave her a gift: an oil set. He asked her to return to art.
“I try not to do the same thing,” she said. “I have one friend who does nothing but roses. She does beautiful paintings (though) I don’t see anything else in her portfolio.”
Her specialty, she said, is landscapes, though she wants to return to her favorite challenge: painting people.
A spare bedroom on the second floor of her home makes a quiet studio where she’ll paint a few times every month. It’s less frequently than she used to, but still enough, she said.
“You have to have fun with it,” she said. “If you’re not, put it away and do something else.”