Lady Nin's Art Blog!

Pat Longley, A Pacific NW Artist

Original Encaustic Wax Paintings






Editor's Notes: This wonderful article about Pat Longley and her family originally came out in the King County Journal on September 25, 2004. Pat will be returning to Issaquah Salmon Days on October 7 - 8, 2006.

To see more of Pat's Encaustic Wax Paintings at Lady Nin's Original Encaustic Wax Paintings by Pat Longley

Tragedies help a wife and mother embrace her inner artist
By Mary Swift, Journal Reporter

It was facing death that taught Jeff Longley how to live. It was dealing with tragedy that led his mother to an art medium she'd never tried. And in the end, it is her art that is helping his family heal. At age 26, the future seemed full of possibility for Jeff. Then, he was diagnosed with adrenal cancer and in February of 2000 underwent surgery to remove a large tumor on his adrenal gland. He never saw again. ``He had a stroke during surgery,'' says his sister, Sammamish's Tammy Muller. ``He saw only pitch black from that day forward. ``For six weeks, we expected him to die. God had a different plan. I decided the hospital was no place for him and took him home. He lived with us for four years.'' Muller, who is married and the mother of two children, is an emergency room social worker. When she had to work, her mother, Pat Longley of Burien, took care of Jeff.


Tragedy changed Jeff, the two women say. Unable care for himself, unable to see, unable to drive, and unable to work, he had to give up his house and his brand new car. He lost everything. Everything -- that is -- except a part of himself he may not have known existed. His sight was gone, but Jeff had new vision. ``God took everything and gave him back a different personality,'' Muller says. ``Before he got sick, he was an Eeyore. He didn't really appreciate life. He was obsessive-compulsive. Cereal boxes had to be in an exact order, that kind of thing. After his surgery, it was like night and day. He appreciated life. He had to depend on other people so he learned the value of friendship. He was blind, but he had joy. He touched lives. He appreciated life.'' And that's how tragedy became a kind of gift for Jeff and those who loved him. ``He laughed a lot more,'' his mother says. ``He was jolly. He made jokes. His favorite thing was to ask you to move from in front of the TV. You'd do it without thinking, and then realize he couldn't see it anyway.'' Before his surgery, Jeff had been a better-than-average dart player. Longley was determined not to let her son's blindness get in the way of that passion.

One Christmas, she bought him a dart board. Standing behind him, she'd direct his throws: ``Right. Left. Up. Down.'' And Muller wasn't about to let Jeff sit on the sidelines either. One day, she took him out on a jet ski, then let him drive. He tossed them both in the water. The family still laughs about the incident. Watching Jeff's struggle was difficult enough for his family. Then, in August of that same year, Jeff's father, Ken Longley, was critically burned in a race car accident. He spent 32 days at Harborview before returning home. Pat Longley found herself searching desperately for a creative outlet that would help her deal with her emotions.

In the past, she'd dabbled in oil and acrylic paint, never with much success or satisfaction. One day, cruising the Internet, she spotted information about encaustic painting in which beeswax-based paint is heated and then applied to a surface with irons. ``I found a place in Wales to order supplies and went to work,'' says Longley, who has no formal art training. ``It just clicked. I could go in and paint and just lose myself. One of the things I hated about oils was that I had to wait for them to dry. With wax, it dries instantly.'' To create her paintings, Longley takes small blocks of colored wax, rubs them on one of her assortment of irons -- the largest is the size of a travel iron, the smallest the size of a fountain pen -- then uses the iron to apply the wax to a piece of paper placed on a warm hot plate. Keeping the paper warm allows her to move the wax around using a sponge or a tissue, she says. ``I also use a hair dryer to blow my wax,'' she says. Eventually, she began displaying and selling her work at art shows with the help of Muller, who does most of the matting and framing, and her oldest son, Terry. Sometimes Jeff would go along, at one point joking with his family that he could make more money if they'd just give him a tin can full of pencils. (As it turned out, Longley has sold many of her paintings -- a fact that still amazes her.)

``We needed something besides just coping with sickness in our lives,'' Muller says. ``Her art helped us heal.'' Last year, Longley's work won one of four awards presented during the annual Issaquah Salmon Days celebration. The award was for originality. She'll be back at Issaquah Salmon Days next weekend (Oct. 2 and 3). Jeff, however, won't be there to tease her. He died a year ago this November after being diagnosed with cancer a second time. Longley recalled the day Jeff learned he had cancer the first time. ``He and I and his dad stood there and we all bawled,'' Longley says. ``Then Jeff said, `OK, let's go get fish and chips at Skippers.' The day we found out he had cancer again, we all stood around and bawled again -- and then we went out to Skippers.'' She chuckled, recalling an exchange she and Jeff had during his illness. ``I told him if he died before me he could come back and see me,'' she said. ``He said, `If you go before I do, don't you dare come back and see me' -- and we all laughed.'' Longley says that before he died, Jeff made seven tapes for his loved ones. In them, he reflected on life, death and dying. ``What a tearjerker it was to hear them,'' Longley says. She and Muller plan to write a book about Jeff and his journey. ``What I think Jeff would want to tell people is this: Quit sweating the small stuff -- and tell people you love them,'' she says.

And she says she believes one thing for sure: ``I have a lot of faith, but I'm not super religious. I know there's a god. I can tell you there's a path. And at the end of every bad thing there is something good coming out of it.''