Kathy Pennington (born Katherine Fay Howard; 1953 in Seattle, Washington) is an American artist known for figurative acrylic paintings, murals, and glazed clay tile reliefs.Portland City Archives, F/2882368 She is also known professionally as K. F. Howard and Katherine Pennington. She lives and works in Portland, Oregon, and owns a house in the same Albina neighborhood where she grew up.

Pennington brings the history of her neighborhood to life in the scenes and characters of her paintings, hoping that viewers will connect with the subjects emotionally. Her paintings often depict family and community gatherings, as well as everyday life in neighborhood businesses, barbershops, restaurants, churches, and bus stops.

Pennington was a postal employee for more than three decades, working as a distribution clerk on the overnight shift for much of that time. The job enabled her to work on art projects during the day to offset the typically unreliable income of an artist.

Representative works

You're My Tenth Customer

This work was commissioned for Portland's Visual Chronicle project, based on Pennington's proposal to create a painting of the interior of the “Waves” hair salon. It features both a hairdresser and a customer.

The painting brings the Black hairdresser and shop owner, Veronica, to the foreground. Her vivid red dress and a large red earring dominate the scene, making a statement that she is the center of the story. Viewers see only the customer's back and head, with a focus on the placement of curling rollers. But outside the window, a close-up cityscape in muted shades of blue and green looms large, situating Veronica's work in the city. The project required an identifiable location within the city of Portland, which Pennington addressed by incorporating recognizable neighborhood businesses and organizations. Along with the painting's title, little doubt is left that this hairdresser works hard to make a living.

Pennington conveys the message through her careful choice of strong colors in the foreground and muted colors in the background to make a statement by featuring a hard-working woman. At the same time, she tells the story of the neighborhood.

A Song We Sing

During the 1990s, Pennington made fired clay tile reliefs based on photographs or public images. The pieces feature molded clay figures that project from the surface, creating three-dimensional designs. Seven were displayed at the Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center exhibition "Una Kim & Kathy Pennington New Works."

Strong Empowerment Village Mural

The mural portrays a scene drawn from Black Portland community life, a theme central to Pennington’s work. Using vibrant colors, the painting shows a view from inside a restaurant, looking out onto the street, enabling Pennington to illustrate a broad range of community activities in a single scene. The cafe's name, MA-N-PA STRONG'S KITCHEN, is centered above two customers in reverse lettering, as would be the visual perspective looking from the inside out. Beneath the restaurant's name is the slogan: GREAT BAR-B-Q. The mural seamlessly incorporates scenes from nearby community locations with enough detail to reveal the actual locations and thereby capture not only the community's daily life but also its history.

On the left, a small plaque identifies one of the three background buildings as Baltzergar's Photos, 4516 N. Williams Avenue, Portland, Oregon, a location that is three blocks from the mural. The image depicts a house similar to the real-world house but without a historical relationship to Baltzergar's Photos, which was a Black-owned photography studio in the Albina neighborhood. The business is of historical significance because its photographs document everyday life in the community, including family portraits, celebrations, and gatherings, rather than only public events.

The central scene shows customers in Ma-n Pa Strong's Kitchen, which was a Black-owned business in the same location as the Strong Building. The business served as an economic anchor and community institution during periods of significant change and displacement in North and Northeast Portland.

On the south side of the mural, a plaque identifies the building in view from the restaurant as Dean's Beauty Salon and Barber Shop. Again, Pennington tells the story of the Albina community. In this case, the building in the mural closely replicates a historic building and shows the actual street number of the building.

Other elements include a mother pushing a stroller as she walks outside past the restaurant windows and a woman holding the restaurant door open for a young girl to enter.

Education Pennington attended several elementary schools in the Albina neighborhood, including Highland School, which is now Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School, as well as neighborhood high schools such as Washington High. After high school, she studied at Oregon State University for three years, taking every available art class. Because the university did not offer an art degree, she pursued history and social sciences instead. She later left Oregon State University and took art classes at various Portland-area colleges before completing her degree at the Portland Art Museum School, which is now the Pacific Northwest College of Art.

Notable artworks

Self Portrait (Braids) (1986) Marbles (1987) Scenes of Learning (1989) You're My Tenth Customer (1991) Showtime (Dance Theatre of Harlem Performance, Portland) (1992) Union Station (1999) Shadow (2025)

Strong Building mural (2026)

Selected exhibitions

Kusasa, Graystone Gallery (1987) IFCC Gallery presents Una Kim & Kathy Pennington, Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center Gallery (August 3 - 26, 2000) Kwanzaa on Killingsworth, Albina Arts Center (October 2021 - January 2022) Matriarch, Multnomah County Library (February 23 - March 31, 2022 Black Artists of Oregon, Portland Art Museum (September 9, 2023 - March 31, 2024) The Indelible Spirit: Artists in Situ, Revitalizing Old Town, Vanport Mosaic (September 28 - October 5, 2024) Kathy Pennington + Harriet Tubman Center for Expanded Curatorial Practice, King School Museum of Contemporary Art (March 12, 2026 - May 28, 2026)

References