Hope In The Abyss
Nettie Kaye uses art to reach others during troubling times
This article was originally published in McCall Life Magazine, Summer 2020.
Every morning for months, Lynette Kaye Williams has woken up alone. The rising sun is her only warming comfort, spilling through venetian blinds and onto her quilt—through the window, winter melts into spring indetectably under a cloudless alpine sky.
She goes about her morning like any other, brushing her teeth in the same way and making breakfast in the same kitchen, but now there’s a feeling of isolation looming over her like a dreadful shadow. Unfortunately, it’s a familiar feeling for most during a time of widespread social distancing.
Sometimes Williams will make a meal for her husband who can’t enter their quarantined home—his work was considered essential during the first weeks of the stay-at-home orders. So, she sets the meal out on their porch and waits. They share the meal six feet apart or separated by a glass pane.
Now, as day breaks over Payette Lake and the new status quo melts back into the old normal, Williams sees hope in the rosy alpenglow. But instead of letting the days go by and holding out for a vaccine, she imagines how that sunrise would look on canvas. It may even make a great lesson on artistic liberty for her thousands of remote students.
“I never actually wanted to do landscapes,” Williams says with a laugh. “But when you do a landscape, there’s a freedom to it. Who knows if that’s how that tree really looks? Whereas if you’re doing a portrait, if you miss it by just a millimeter, they’ll know.”
Williams enters her studio, converted to accommodate recording equipment as well as her array of paints, completed projects, and works-in-progress. She sets a blank canvas on her easel under a hard bright light—the backdrop is dark and undefined, straight out of PBS. She spreads a standard array of paints on her palette: titanium white, cadmium yellow, burnt sienna. perylene green, and cobalt blue. Finally, she hits record, sits down, and begins smoothly.
“Hi everyone, I’m Nettie Kaye,” she says with a smile, her red hair pinned in a messy bun, textured like wild brushstrokes. “Welcome back to my studio.”
Nettie K Studio
Williams—better known as Nettie Kaye—runs a YouTube channel “NettieKStudio” with nearly 5,000 subscribers and more than 340,000 views. Dozens of aspiring artists from everywhere will regularly comment and Williams will read every single one.
“As an artist, part of my DNA enjoys the isolation,” Williams says. “But one thing that makes it easier is our technology … I can talk with people around the world.”
Williams has had a long career as a professional artist and painting teacher. She and her husband have lived all up and down the west coast but ended up in McCall about 10 years ago.
“My doctor said it was important that I stay high and dry,” Williams says. “So we came up here to McCall and the mountains.”
Since then, Williams has taught out of a local studio and built a growing community of local artists who she could paint with. But about eight years ago, she wanted something new.
“I started posting compositions on YouTube,” she says. “I posted it and forgot about it. But I came back and 8,000 people had watched it.”
This turned a new page in Williams’ story. For years before, she would teach and paint face-to-face. In her own home, she’d welcome a group of eight or so kids and teach them how to paint at the dining room table. With Williams’ spark, the children were dry kindling flaring like wildfire with creative freedom.
Her passion began in 1977 when she first started cartooning. Williams describes herself as a humorist born from a close relationship with her aunt, who ended up being her first teacher.
“I started cartooning because I realized that if I couldn’t pray her out of bed, I would laugh her out of bed,” Williams says with a laugh. “Well, she died at 61; I’m 60, so, we’re all holding on trying to make it past where Aunt Eleanor had.”
Williams would send her aunt a cartoon every week, the first step of many towards honing her artistic skill. Over the years, she grew as a portrait painter through instruction and practice. These lessons also shaped her into a better teacher. One lesson she still carries with her to this day is that children are more capable than anyone gives them credit for.
“The teacher can learn more than the student in a lot of ways,” Williams says. “When I teach, I try not to dumb anything down. I don’t teach them how to do a handprint turkey at age seven. I teach them college- or high-school-level concepts, and you’d be surprised how they can pick it up.”
While Williams’ career has taken many shapes over her lifetime, the YouTube boom has granted her an entirely new outlet.
Despite this opportunity to leverage technology and engage with a captive audience worldwide, she yearns for the in-person connection that was suddenly torn from her life. From commissioned portraits for Nobel laureates to charity works for unhoused communities in Portland, there had always been a physical connection with her audience.
“That’s the one thing I’m concerned about in all of this. I miss being able to hug people—I’m not even able to hug my husband,” Williams says. “It’s something we take for granted. When we worked with the homeless, I would hug them, and that was a huge thing because they are never touched like that in their situation.”
Now, even as Williams spends each day confined to her own home in an effort to keep herself and her community safe, she can share her passion through the internet.
“At one point, I thought I was going to be on OPB, and that would’ve been a big deal—just having a broadcast go out across Oregon,” Williams says. “Then when this YouTube thing got going, it exploded around the world. I can translate, communicate, and help people with their art all over the world. I have people watching from Spain, Brazil, Norway, France, and Italy.”
Two Sides To Community
Throughout the stay-at-home order in Idaho, Williams has seen the bad side of people: from whatever reports are on national news, to stories of out-of-towners buying out McCall’s grocery stores. But on the other side, she sees hope.
“A lot of people are online in Valley County offering to buy, sell, and swap supplies to help each other out,” Williams says. “People will write that they’re available this afternoon and willing to pick up groceries for whoever can’t risk going outside. It’s really a tight community.”
So Williams tries to do her part.
“I love the community, I really do,” Williams says. “It has been difficult, but we’re helping each other out.”
In a recent video, high-pitched strings play as the scene opens on Williams in her studio. She is as welcoming as ever and easily moves into a simple acrylic lesson on landscapes.
She points out how acrylic will darken as it dries, unlike oil paints.
She breaks down her entire process, knowing that while no one else is in the studio, there will be dozens of people across the globe painting alongside her.
“Through this crisis, what I’m looking forward to is helping people who may have a lot of free time on their hands. Maybe they want to try out a new hobby or reignite an old passion,” Williams says.
Anyone can learn to paint through Williams’ videos at www.youtube.com/NettieKStudio. Recently, she has published content focused on teaching kids how to paint and hopes it will offer inspiration to a community that has given her hope.
“I don’t do it for the applause—I’m not the best artist in the world, and I know that,” Williams says. “I just love bringing joy to people, and I love sharing what I know.”