By Alexa Garcia-Ditta
The Baytown Sun
Published July 26, 2007
Ken Pridgeon, better known as “Ken the Dauber,” has a vision. He sees the pond near his Lee Drive home filled with children and their fathers paddling in boats and fishing. He appreciates the beauty in fish and nature, and wants kids to appreciate them as well. “A kid with a fishing pole is a kid without a gun,” the artist said. Well, the Eddie V. Gray Wetlands Center is helping Pridgeon take steps toward his vision of educating children. The 72-year-old artist has donated several of his original paintings to the nature center.
Tracey Prothro, natural resource programs superintendent, said that the Wetlands Center’s fishing camps and nature programs drew Pridgeon to the facility. “We do a lot of education of kids, and that spoke to him,” she said. “I think they’re perfect for here.” The five pieces, hanging in a conference room of the main building, depict vibrantly colored fish, luscious skies and fluid waters. “I like to make my fish bigger than the people,” he said. “It’s a little crazy, but I want you to focus on the fish. The people are not that important.”
One of the paintings captures Pridgeon’s 7-year-old self, fishing in a small pond behind his house. Each nook and cranny of his piece has a different story to tell, from his mother’s sewing spool, father’s old reel and broken rod. “This is me in my mind as a kid,” he said. “It’s my first fly rod. I didn’t even know what a fly rod was.”
The Baytonians work can be seen all over town, for he designed several auto shop signs along North Main Street. He earned his nickname, “Ken the Dauber,” about 30 years ago when he painted helicopter-landing pads. He said that because the ground was so hard on his paintbrush, he had to daub the paint along the road. “[An official] said, I dub you ‘Ken the Dauber,’” he said. “A dabber is not very classy, but a dauber, that has a little flare to it.”
His friends and family members been become used to calling him by his nickname, so much so that they forget his real last name. “I’ve been Dauber so long that people write checks to me as Ken Dauber,” he said, smiling. Pridgeon is currently working on the last of three panels for the center’s snake exhibit. “Chiquita [the snake] is bright yellow, and will look beautiful in there,” Prothro said.
Pridgeon is a jack-of-all-trades, dabbling in poetry writing, singing and inventing. But his canvases and paintbrushes hold his passion. “[Fish] are beautiful,” he said. “I want them to see the beauty in everything, not just in fish, but see the silver lining in everything.”