Excerpt from
Sarkis Knows Who

by Mike Thoele
News Publisher

March 30, 2000

JUNCTION CITY—Born in Amman, Jordan to Armenian parents displaced by the Middle Eastern conflicts that preceded World War II, Antikajian grew up in difficult circumstances. Neither of his parents had ever attended school, and his father had been forced into the Turkish Army at age 16.

In spite of those difficulties, his family had achieved a measure of economic stability. They placed their son in private schools run by Franciscan priests, though Middle Eastern unrest dictated that part of his education came in Amman and part in Jerusalem. Life was difficult for the family.

As Sarkis neared his high school graduation in 1950, the pressure was great to pursue training in engineering or medicine, fields where his family could be reassured of a return on the huge investment that advanced education would represent. But for more than a decade, another impulse had been gnawing him.

“When I was eight years old, I knew I wanted to be a painter,” he says. “All the time, I drew everything around me. I drew my sister, I drew the dog. I drew anything I could see. But in Jordan, I never heard of anyone being a painter.”

Eventually he was given a set of oil paints. He dabbled on his own, haunting the U. S. Information Service library and poring over books of old masters, and new ones, too. When the canvases that came with the paint set were gone, he worked on scraps of bed sheets.

But through it all, the boy was told that art could never be an occupation. After high school he was channeled to engineering school, a poor fit that lasted only a few months. He thought about going to Italy, pursuing painting. But responding to family, he came to America in 1958 and entered pharmacy school at the University of New Mexico.

His brushes and pencils traveled with him. Art was a constant for him, though the dream of earning a living from it stood more distant than ever. For his family in Jordan, the money required to keep him in classes in America was a king’s ransom. Antikajian lived frugally, learning the pharmacopoeia while working as a janitor in the university art department.

“I loved those hours there in the studios,” he says. “Even the smell of it. The turpentine in the air was like perfume.”

At New Mexico, he met Karen Albach, an education major. They married in 1961, as he finished pharmacy school.

For five years he worked at New Mexico pharmacies in Farmington and Gallup. But the desert never suited. The landscape and the adobe were too much like the land he had left—he wanted the green side of America. In 1966, he and Karen moved to Oregon.

In Eugene, he found employment as a pharmacist, and she settled into a long career as a teacher in the 4J schools. They bought land near Cheshire, and built their own home. Their sons, Kyle and Garrick, were born and grew to adolescence. For Sarkis, the painting continued through all those years, mostly in watercolors. He pursued it obsessively, never satisfied that his work matched his vision.

“Finally I started trying to sell a little, at shows in malls,” he says. “Nobody bought anything. The only people who ever bought were other painters. It was so disheartening.”

In 1989 he could stand it no longer. With Karen’s support, he quit his job and plunged into a two-year marathon of painting, determined once and for all to see where art might lead.

“It was the most productive time of my life,” he says. “I painted every day, all day—two or three paintings a day. This was it. All or nothing. And in the end, I knew I was a painter. The things I was doing on the canvas were beginning to look like my dreams.”

A broke painter, as it turned out. In 1991, he returned to the prescription counter, but only half-time, because his work—increasingly bold and strong statements covering the gamut of oils, acrylics, watercolors and sketches—was beginning to sell.

Four years ago he left pharmacy behind forever. His art supports him now and commands solid prices. The work is mostly representational, falling between abstract and realistic. Recognition for it comes in various ways, but none is more important than the connection that occurs when a painting is purchased.

“The price, it doesn’t matter,” he says. “It can be only a hundred dollars, but it feels like a million. What I think about is that somehow this person sees what I see, likes what I like. It makes me look at them differently, to wonder how it is that we’re alike. That is the real joy of being a painter.”