Medardy Westrum (B 1942) American, Oil on Canvas. Large abstract nautilus spiral. Signed bottom right. 

Overall: 55 X 55 in. 

Sight: 54 X 54 in. 

#2764 . 

Medardy Westrum was born in Eatonville, Washington in April 1942. After graduating high school he spent much time traveling America and the South Pacific, eventually settling in San Francisco where he established a company for fabric designs. For 20 years he focused on European textiles before shifting to specifically introducing textiles to America from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and particularly Thailand. In the 1980s he began to make art as well, painting abstract shapes and designs in oils and watercolors. He began to divide his time between San Francisco and Nantucket, exhibiting frequently at the Lobster Pot Gallery and selling all his pieces regularly. In the early 1990s he participated in an innovative retail collective called Under One Roof, with the proceeds going to support AIDS charities, and lived as an openly gay man from then onward. A series of personal tragedies struck him in the 2000s and 2010s, including the death of his brother and a fire at his apartment in Castro in 2015 that destroyed hundreds of antique tapestries and decades of his own artwork, making his surviving pieces extremely rare. The local LGBT community organized a fundraiser to help him through the ordeal, and today he continues to produce new works and is working on restarting his textile business in San Francisco.