About the artist
Since his return from active service in WWll and his schooling at the Art
Center School  [now the Art Center College of Design], Ken Duffin has been a
professional artist. For many years he was a freelance artist with his studio in
San Francisco working  on advertising accounts such as Bank of America,
Standard Oil, Kaiser Aluminum, Safeway, Hewlett-Packard, PG&E and others.
Later he moved to Seattle to become a Boeing artist. Here he painted
airplanes in flight as well as promotional illustrations.  After leaving Boeing, he
again became a freelance artist , this time in Seattle and  specializing in
architectural illustration. These many years of fast-pace production, meeting
deadlines and other demands developed skill and discipline which he now
finds useful in his most recent direction.

In his remaining years here in Eastern Washington, he now paints, released
from the demands of commercial art. He loves the outdoors with sunlight and
shadows, fog, rain and all the elements, trees and fields and mountains and
lakes and rivers, almost anything from nature. His home now is the Northwest
where he has lived for nearly 40 years and where nature abounds. Trips to
the mountains and beaches provide him with an abundant supply of material
for his paintings. He occasionally travels to other parts of the country, and
abroad to gather material to paint.

Ken is a life member and past president of the Puget Sound Group of
Northwest Painters, a 75 year old organization that has had many of
Northwest's finest painters as members. He has donated at least one painting
a year, as all members do, for 40 years to their annual auction, which raises
funds, not only for the club's expenses, but for scholarship grants to
deserving young artists and award money to selected art shows. He was a
founding member and past president of the "San Francisco Society of
Illustrators" and a contributing member of the US Air Force Documentary Art
Program, where again paintings are donated documenting experiences had
while visiting Air Force Bases around the world. He is also a member of "Oil
Painters of America" and a signature member of the "Northwest Watercolor
Society".

Shows and awards

His paintings have been accepted in many juried shows, including the national
Arts for the Parks annual  top 100 in 1999 and 2001 and several times in the
top 200.  Paintings of his were selected in competitions for posters for the
Washington cities of Redmond,  Edmonds [twice], Chelan and also for the
75th anniversary Ellensburg Rodeo
In East Side Fine Arts Association shows of Bellevue,Wa. he won first prize in
1997 and third prize in each of two shows in 2001. He has been accepted and
won awards in the annual Puget Sound Country Show, as well as shows in  
Ocean Shores, Anacortes, Edmonds,  La Conner, Chelan. and others
He has won best of show at the second annual
Peninsula Art Exhibition of 2004 in Gig Harbor, Wa.
He also had a painting accepted in the recent Oil Painters of America national
and regional shows
Duffin's paintings hang in numerous homes and offices throughout the
country.