She started using acrylic paint on canvas in October 2019 as another activity to do alongside her grandchildren. Not taking any art classes in school didn’t hinder her one bit. To start with, she sketched what she wanted to paint first to give herself an idea of what she was working with.

Feathers were her beginning subjects, practicing with different brush styles and techniques. “I just found my calling,” Sather said. “I saw clouds in the sky that looked like feathers right after I drew them!”

Once she mastered feathers, angels were next on her list. Having religious faith was one of the inspirations. In all of her paintings, no matter the subject, she uses metallic-looking paint. If the paint doesn’t already have that appearance, she mixes them with silver to achieve the desired effect.

The winged figures started with white robes and hints of grey for shading. As time went on, Sather decided it was time to put a spin on them and added color.

Angel paintings are Patti Sather’s specialty, besides feathers, and she added shades of purple and blue, covering it with glitter.

“I don’t normally do any two [paintings] alike,” she said.

Sather’s art became popular very fast before Thanksgiving and Christmas. People wanted to give her work as a present to someone and half of the money they paid Sather went toward random acts of kindness.

For Thanksgiving, she and her grandkids handed out $50 to those in need to help them buy a Thanksgiving dinner or other things they needed.

During the Christmas season, she and her grandchildren went to several retail stores and purchased pajamas, other clothing, toys, coloring books, popcorn and more. Everything was given to individual people and to families that were in need.

The pajamas were the first round for the pay-it-forward boxes. Funds were building as time went on so they could purchase all the other items. The plethora of items was taken to the Christmas community dinner at the Grand Hotel.

Patti Sather painted a group of pink feathers on a flat canvas and framed it for display.

Some leftover items she has by the end of the year are given to the Minot Homeless Coalition to be distributed by Louis “Mac” McLeod.

Even though Christmas is still about six months away, Sather is continuing to paint her feathers and angels. She has started branching out a little more and accepting commissions. One of them was an owl for a friend. A pencil wasn’t needed to sketch the owl first. She jumped right in with the paintbrush.

Months later, Sather is still beginning with paint, not graphite. Her confidence in her own ability has pushed her to move on to other things, as well.

She still likes her metallic-looking paint, and she has started moving to larger canvases. She said she was quite proud of how her painting of the Northern Lights over a snowy landscape turned out. “They are really hard to paint!” Sather said of the aurora borealis. To continue with her newfound tradition, though, she painted an angel in the bottom right corner.

Writing still holds a larger portion of her heart. She used to write for the Farmer’s Union Oil Company of Velva, which she said is now known as Enerbase. She tried to start up her own magazine here in Minot but unfortunately, “it never got off the ground.”

That hasn’t stopped her from writing, though. She still has a couple novel ideas in mind. One of them is more of a science-fiction novel about little men in blue jeans and blue shirts who bear a striking resemblance to Jesus from the Bible. They have the power to meld into one person, and split into multiple little people. Their appearance never changes.

The other, Sather said, is about a woman running from a severe domestic violence situation and settles down in another town. Finding another man, who happens to make a significant amount of money, she moves in with him and later finds out she’s pregnant. Knowing it wasn’t his, the new husband intends to sell the child, and it later gets much darker.

Sather goes through time periods where she wants to write and others when she wants to paint. “It can be hard to balance them sometimes,” she admitted. Despite that, she still does the best she can to raise money and give to the less fortunate.