Bye Bye Brad
So long to signs and music
story and photos by Solveig Torvik

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Brad Pinkerton installs one of the latest signs he has made, in Winthrop, for the Yakama Nation's new office.

After sixteen years in the valley, sign painter Brad Pinkerton, whose artwork is ubiquitous throughout Winthrop and Twisp, is packing up his brushes and moving on to Westport, Washington. Along with his art business, he’s also taking with him the North Cascades Old Time Fiddlers Contest, an event he instigated that’s been held in Winthrop the last 14 summers.

Pinkerton leaves behind an impossible-to-miss artistic legacy in the valley of some 100 public signs, by his own reckoning. “I never thought in my twenties that I’d be decorating a whole town,” he says.

He’s alluding to Winthrop, though his work can be seen in Twisp at such locations as Tappi Restaurant, the Merc Playhouse, AeroMethow, and Paco’s Tacos. Winthrop’s fire department and post office are among public buildings bearing his signs, as are numerous businesses along the town’s boardwalk. His sign for the Winthrop Lilbrary reads; ‘Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend.  Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.’

Winthrop has a strict Westernization code, and Pinkerton has had his share of dustups with the town’s Westernization committee. “Right now they’re great,” he says of committee members. But, he grins, “I’m the only artist that the Westernization committee called the cops on.” That incident involved his use of language at a committee meeting that was deemed threatening and resulted in a formal warning from the town marshal, he says.

Pinkerton, who will be 60 in March, is a self-taught artist and musician who dropped out of high school before graduating. “I was always a kid that could draw,” he says. Asked if he regrets not having a high school diploma, he answers simply:  “I can hold up my end of a conversation.”

Pinkerton figures he got his fiddling talent from a fiddle-playing grandfather he never knew. He grew up on a ranch owned by his parents in Colorado and spent some of his early years as a sheepherder in southern Utah. For nine winters he was caretaker of a hunting lodge owned by the chairman of the Yale University Classics department that was so far into Idaho’s wilderness that it took two days to get there on horseback. “I had bighorn sheep in my yard,” he recalls. “I loved it.”

Pinkerton has signs on display in Texas, California, Hawaii and even Panama, where they adorn an eco-lodge owed by Winthrop residents Tom and Linda Kimbrell.  “I’m going to be open to coming back” to do more signs in the valley, Pinkerton says.

He first came to Winthrop from Salmon, Idaho, to paint a mural and ended up moving here. “I really don’t want to go,” he says. But his decision to leave was prompted by the unexpected sale of the property where he and his wife Eileen are living, and he adds that they’re looking forward to buying a home of their own in Westport, where Eileen, also a musician, will be working as a librarian.

Click the images below to see a sampling of Brad's work in the valley.
The ever popular put-your-face-on-cowboy/cowgirl piece shown the Grist home page is also Brad's work.