Charles Stokes

Charles Stokes (1944–2008) was a painter and sculptor and a prominent member of the last generation of artists identified with the Northwest School. He was the first winner of the prestigious Betty Bowen Award in concert with the Seattle Art Museum in 1979. His works are held by Northwest museums and institutions, most prominently the Museum of Northwest Art in La Conner, Washington, and by numerous private collectors. Revered as an energetic, charismatic, original, and meticulous artist and teacher, he spent his final two decades in self-imposed isolation from the art world producing works seen only by intimates. Stokes was born in Tacoma, Washington. He lived and worked in the Northwest until the early 1990s, when he settled in Manhattan, New York City.

Born in Tacoma, Washington, Charles Stokes received a B.F.A. from Central Washington University and an M.F.A. from the University of Oregon.

Charles Stokes taught at Cornish School of the Arts in Seattle, Washington 1969-1985. Among his colleagues were painters Albert Fisher and Ron Wigginton. According to art critic Regina Hackett, writing in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Stokes “impressed students with his formidable technique, experimental attitude and commitment to his craft.”

Writing about Stokes in the Seattle Times, art critic Sheila Farr said, “It's hard to think of a Northwest artist more gifted, mercurial and omnivorously creative than former Cornish College of the Arts instructor Charles Stokes. Or one whose style had a greater influence on his students. . . . Art for Mr. Stokes was like spontaneous combustion. He painted, drew, made music, invented his own musical instruments, wrote poetry, made sculptures out of whatever material was at hand.”

Commenting on the uniqueness of Stokes’ work, former colleague Albert Fisher said, "Nobody was doing anything like it. He had an iconography that included the unseen things of the world.” Stokes’ early work, Sheila Farr wrote, “put him at the forefront of the younger Northwest ‘mystics.’ You could make a case connecting his work to Leo Kenney, Mark Tobey and Morris Graves, but his style and imagery could be so fresh and imaginative that there was no mistaking it for anyone else's.”

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