Alex Boorman's artistic career already successful

MOSES LAKE - Fourteen-year-old Alex Boorman loves movies, loves to sing and dance, loves to bowl on the Special Olympics bowling team, loves to greet customers as they come in the family's business on Third Avenue.

And she loves to paint.

Just like any other successful artist, Alex has her own exhibit space, in the back at Red Door Consignment, the family's business. It's easy to tell she's a successful artist. "She's sold over 20 (paintings)," said her grandmother Jan Thacker, and she's working on a couple of commissions.

She had a one-woman show at Red Door last October, among other things to commemorate Downs Syndrome Month. She decided when she sold paintings, she would donate half the money to one of her other favorite things, Special Olympics, said her mom Lisa Boorman.

Although the money isn't really much of a factor to Alex, Thacker said. "She just loves the art. She sees the joy in painting. But she doesn't really see the (monetary) value," she said.

She's been an artist almost from babyhood. "I can't remember a time when she wasn't doing art," Lisa Boorman said.

"I can't either," Thacker said. Her grandma taught Alex to paint, and they've been painting buddies since. Her favorite mediums are watercolors and acrylics, Thacker said. Alex couldn't remember how long she's been using watercolors, but Grandma knew. "You've been doing watercolors since you were old enough to hold a brush," Thacker said.

"She tried oils and didn't like them," Thacker said, although Alex disputed that.

Alex has painted some abstractions, but she's more of a figurative artist. Her subjects include birds and flowers, trees, apples, landscapes, her dog, "and polka dots," she said.

She has to use a guide occasionally, "like a debit card," she said, when she's painting tree branches and such, to keep the branch in line. "Otherwise I paint all over the place," she said.

Alex is not a pastel artist, as her blackbirds against the orange background, and bright yellow vase full of flowers, can attest. Thacker said occasionally Alex surprises with her artistic choices, especially with color. "I think she's always going to be big and bold," Thacker said.

"She just picks out colors, and she just goes," she said.

"She has an instinct for what colors go together," Thacker said. In fact, Alex's artistic instincts are right on. "She's good, and she understands the concepts," Thacker said. Alex has already learned one of art's hardest lessons, her grandmother said, when to quit.

Her paintings have touched people, including the woman who commissioned her latest painting. On her first viewing of Alex's work "she stood in front of the painting, and she just cried," Thacker said.

Art isn't Alex's only talent. "I love to sing and dance," she said; she's in the choir at Chief Moses Middle School.

"She started doing impressions of us one day," her mom said, and she had everyone in the family pretty well pegged. "It's kind of like a roast."

"She's definitely the character of the family," Thacker said, and every regular customer at Red Door knows Alex. Everybody at school seems to know Alex too, and when the family goes shopping they're always running into people that know her. "Everyone knows Alex. It's amazing how many people know Alex," Jan Boorman said.

Jan Boorman has seven children, and she said it's important Alex is treated like the others, and has choices in life as she grows up, no matter what.

At 14, Alex's art, and Alex's life, have already had an impact on those around her. "Alex is a joy in our lives. In everyone's life," said her sister-in-law Kyleigh Boorman.