Kenneth Callahan mural

These photographs were taken at the Anacortes Post Office. They represent sections of a large wall mural painted in 1936 by the late Kenneth Callahan. Another half of this painting was hidden from sight when a lobby ceiling was lowered. According to Seattle/King County HistoryLink.org, “the Spokane-born painter was one of the leading artists of the Pacific Northwest school. As a young painter he was exhibited in the First Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary Art at the Whitney Museum in New York. He subsequently was recognized in a breakthrough 1953 Life magazine article as one of the ‘Mystic Painters of the Northwest.’ He spent years curating at the Seattle Art Museum, and when he was fired in 1952 (he had been using the museum as a studio, which a new curator found reprehensible), he continued painting and selling paintings from his studio on the south fork of the Stillaguamish River, near Granite Falls in Snohomish County.”