Sure, the starving artist is a stereotype. For Carroll Devin, it proved true enough to net her an astonishingly valuable possession — a Chuck Close oil painting worth as much as $150,000.
It’s quite a tale, how the former Everett woman came to own an abstract work painted in 1960 by one of the world’s greatest living artists.
“He was a student, as far as I know,” Devin, 72, said Tuesday from her home in Mesa, Ariz.
I tracked her down after getting a call from an Everett man who’d seen Devin last week on “Antiques Roadshow,” the highest-rated series on PBS. Described by PBS as “part history lesson and part treasure hunt,” the show offers appraisals for antiques and collectibles brought in by people at stops around the country.
Devin was featured, along with the Close painting titled “Man Walking,” on an episode taped in August at the Phoenix Convention Center and aired last week.
R. Boyd Devin, the Arizona woman’s late husband, was a drama instructor at Everett Junior College in the 1960s. He left Everett in 1968 to head the theater department at Eastern Washington University in Cheney. He died three years ago.
His widow said her husband often told the story of the painting.
“Boyd was sitting in his office one day, and Chuck came in and said, ‘I need $8 or I’m going to be thrown out of my apartment tonight. I’ve got to have $8 or I’m going to be evicted,’ ” said Devin, recalling her husband’s encounter with the young Close. “Boyd gave him $8 and Chuck gave him the painting. We lived on Wetmore Avenue by the hospital, in an older home I dearly loved. He brought it home and we hung it above the fireplace.”
By the time Close was at Everett Junior College, which later became Everett Community College, he wasn’t long for Everett. Charles Thomas Close was born in Monroe in 1940. When he was 11, his father died. His piano-teacher mother moved to Everett. Despite his poor health and modest means, his talent took Close to the University of Washington and Yale University.
Now 69, Close is known for self-portraits, and for tiny paintings assembled on grids into huge works. His artwork is in New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. In 1988, he suffered a spinal blood clot that left him largely paralyzed, yet his stature as an artist has grown.
In 2002, when Close donated a limited-edition print to the new Monroe Library, Richard Solomon, president of the New York art publishing company Pace Prints, had this to say: “Chuck might be the most — he is certainly one of the most important artists of his generation.”
Devin said her Close painting is the work of a young artist, likely influenced by his Everett Junior College instructors Russell Day and Larry Bakke.
She said Close told her husband that “Man Walking,” with its bright yellows and oranges, was meant to convey the feeling of being out waking in the sunshine. She said she sees the man, but others have told her they can’t. “He’s very plain. There’s a musical note, he’s whistling,” she said.
Devin’s daughter, Hillary Devin, accompanied her to the “Antiques Roadshow” taping. They stood in long lines, and saw “ugly things and beautiful things. It was fabulous, we just had a ball,” she said.
When they first described what they had, she said, appraiser Alasdair Nichol “must have asked us five times.” He consulted with a woman who did some checking on a computer before coming back to ask if they wanted to guess the value. When she suggested that it had to be in the thousands, the appraiser said that at auction the painting could fetch from $100,000 to $150,000.
“That was a shocker,” Devin said.
The appraiser gave her names of museums that would be interested, and Devin and her family talked about selling the painting. For now, that’s not the plan.
She wants her son Scott, born in 1963, to have the painting someday.
“He always loved this painting. When he was young, he would lie on the floor and look at it. It’s bright and warm and full of color,” she said. “If somebody made an offer, I would have to talk to my son about it.”
She’s no art collector, but Devin is certain the painting will keep its value.
“This is not something I set out to achieve,” she said. “It’s a great surprise.”
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460, muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
Chuck Close art on ‘Antiques Roadshow’
The episode of the PBS program “Antiques Roadshow” featuring a former Everett resident’s Chuck Close’s painting aired last week and is available online: www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/video.
Click on “Phoenix, Hour 2.”
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