Kristina Becker
1954 - 2017
Artistic Influences:
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Bio:
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Born August 7th, 1954 in Toledo, Ohio, Kristina Marie Panos was the youngest of three daughters, including her twin sister Katina. Although born in Toledo, Kris grew up in Temperance, Michigan, where she graduated from Bedford Senior High School.
In 1975, at age 21, she moved to Colorado where she fell in love with the mountains and ended up meeting the artist Charles H. Rockey (known as "Rockey") of Manitou Springs, who would become an artistic mentor and lifelong friend. Some of Kris's earliest art dates back to these days spent learning and drawing with Rockey. Living in Colorado, she would eventually become Kristina Becker after meeting and marrying Robert Becker Jr. (known as "Klove") in 1980, with whom she conceived two sons; Nikolas & Casey. They lived in the mountains of Colorado Springs in a trailer for most of their marriage. Eventually they would divorce, with Kris moving back to Ohio in 1990 to raise her two sons as a single mother. Back in Toledo, Kris would go back to school to get her nursing degree as a reliable way to provide for her children. She was a practicing RN for nearly 20 years, all the while doing art in any spare time she had. She worked at various places including the U of M hospital, a plastic surgeons office, Sunset House, but primarily at Toledo Hospital. During the 90s is when she really began to focus on her skills as a painter. Until then, she had mostly done pencil, charcoal, and pastels drawings. Her pastel work can be seen as largely bridging the gap between her drawing phase to her painting phase. One of the first subjects that Kris began to really paint were flowers, as you can see in some of her earliest oil paintings. From there, she did other still lifes with fruits and inanimate objects, until finally discovering a knack and passion for painting birds. As a subject matter, birds represented perhaps many things to Kris, but not least of which was a notion of freedom (which was an integral theme in her life and work), with their ability to spread their wing and take flight to e.g. new lands. She researched and took many notes about various kinds of birds, their habits, behaviors, etc. She also had an affinity for the natural world in general, which she saw as imbued with a kind of spirituality that brought her peace. During this period of the mid to late 90s, she also started to invest more effort into becoming more well known as a local artist; doing portrait commissions, mural commissions, art shows, festivals, and getting accepted into various exhibitions, including a local artist exhibit at the Toledo Museum of Art (TMA). She even volunteered at her son's school (much to his chagrin at the time), as the "art lady"; coming to visit a few weeks out of the school year to teach kids art and do fun art projects. Teaching art had always been a lifelong dream of her's, and in 2002, she started a 'Children's Art Classes' business out of her home in Toledo. She taught those art classes as a freelance artist/teacher from her basement studio every weekend, making an impact on dozens of young students over the course of that year, with some students contacting her later in life to thank her for teaching them art. In 2003, Kris became a grandmother, with the birth of her oldest grandson Kalib. Around this same time, with her boys out of high school, Kris sold her house in Toledo and began working as a travel nurse, where she got to fly around the country, working in various states including Alaska, Vermont, Colorado, Arizona, Florida, and several others. This is when Kris really began to hone and perfect her bird paintings, seeing and cataloging different kind of birds she saw in her travels. New states also opened interest in new subjects and styles, e.g. the Northwestern Art of the native Alaskans. After a few years traveling, and discovering issues with her health, Kris returned to Ohio in 2006 and bought a house with her son there. This was also the year her second grandson, Zakary, was born, and for the next few years she would help raise her two grandsons and support her son as he went through college to get his degree in art education. Her health would slowly decline over the next several years however, fighting primarily a case of liver cancer. But after going on disability, she discovered a new way to make art. On her iPad, Kristina discovered a new medium---digital painting, which would become her final and main medium before her death. She was constantly working on her iPad, learning and honing her skills in this new digital format and creating new pieces all the time. In 2012, her third and final grandchild arrived, Ruby, who was the daughter of her oldest son. Kristina worked faithfully creating digital paintings for the next several years, joining online digital art communities and making a name for herself under the artist alias "Violet Adams", which was a name she had loved since childhood. In the summer of 2017, her health took a turn for the worse, and she was admitted to a hospice facility a couple miles away from her home in Toledo, Ohio. Two days after being admitted, Kris passed away peacefully on June 21st, 2017 at the age of 62, with her 2 boys and twin sister by her side. As a strong believer and Christian all her life, God was always an important and driving force for her, which can be seen from much of the artwork she did. Kris joined the church at St. Patrick's of Heatherdowns a little over a year before her death, which held a memorial mass for her in July of 2017, with friends and family from all over in attendance. She leaves behind 2 sons, 3 grandchildren, and a lifetime worth of artwork. It was her wish to have her ashes return to the tree in Colorado she loved so much, which remains her final resting place today. 
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It is my belief that my mother would want to be remembered by the world as the Artist that she was.
May her story find a way to continue on though her Art and influences;
living on in all who cherish and find joy in her artwork.
It is my belief that my mother would want to be remembered by the world as the Artist that she was.
May her story find a way to continue on though her Art and influences;
living on in all who cherish and find joy in her artwork.
