Picture perfect

Visitors to Kean Anderson's home can't enter a room without seeing examples of her artistic talent. On nearly every wall, there are oil paintings of bucolic rural landscapes, snow-capped mountains, flowery meadows, a haunting sunset. There are portraits of family members. Even her pet macaw, Chloe, and cocker spaniel, Sammy, have been rendered in two lifelike dimensions.

The Malay-born Anderson has two pieces to which she's particularly attached.

One flowed from her brush after a phone call from home with word that a sister was diagnosed with breast cancer.

"It was very scary," Anderson said of the news.

She poured out her worry on canvas and rendered a scene that would not be out of place hanging alongside Monet's "Flowering Garden at Sainte-Adresse."

It depicts a tranquil lake among woods and flowers.

"I put a lot of feeling in my paintings," Anderson said. "It's very peaceful." She said she imagined herself in the scene, sitting in contemplation.

Her sister survived her bout with cancer, but another inspiration did not.

A rural scene of flowers and open meadow was dedicated to a customer of Anderson's, a server at Coyote Canyon. He was an elderly farmer who died in his late 90s.

"I always took care of him and made sure he was happy," she said.

Graphic artist in Malaysia

Although her oil paintings are art-gallery worthy, Anderson came late to the medium.

She was a graphic artist for an advertising firm in Malaysia for 13 years, and decided to make the leap to art director, a position for which she needed more schooling.

Her plan was to pick up some English and art history classes in Michigan then study art direction in California before returning home.

During summer break while she was in Michigan, she and fellow students decided to get jobs, so they journeyed to Chicago, where a national employment agency placed her at Hong Kong Buffet in Salina.

Here she met and fell in love with Steven Anderson and has been in Salina ever since.

But until she walked into Salina's Hobby Lobby store about a half dozen years ago, she'd never worked in oil.

"I always wanted to but I never got the chance to learn," she said.

Her graphics art job confined her to other media: watercolors, pastels, pencil drawing.

"I walked in and saw a bunch of ladies painting," she said.

The group comprised students of Flo Nelson, who had been teaching art classes at the crafts store for a number of years.

She's very good

Anderson said Nelson didn't need a hard-sell approach to interest her.

"I joined them the next week, and I haven't stopped since," Anderson said.

"She's very good," Nelson said. "I don't have to help her hardly at all."

When she does, it's welcome.

"Flo is fantastic," Anderson gushed. "She can see things I don't see. I just love her."

Anderson, who also goes by "Cynthia," said creativity runs in the family. Her siblings all are accomplished artists. Her father, who immigrated from China to Malaysia as a young boy, is an accomplished Chinese calligrapher.

Except for portraits, which are commissioned, Anderson doesn't actively sell her work. The Andersons have no children. Their dogs fill that role, but next on the hard-to-part-with-family-member roster are Anderson's paintings.

Might have to sell some

She confessed she'll have to break down and sell some eventually because she's running out of space in her home.

"I paint every week, whenever I have time," she said.

Nelson said Anderson's technique has improved to the point she considered her a likely successor.

" 'No,' " Anderson told her. " 'You have to stay here forever.' "