Gary Packingham Artist Bio

The path to becoming a painter was a journey with many unexpected twists of fate. Following high school I attended the Columbus College of Art & Design. This lasted only one year, as the urgency of the 1960s anti-war protests led to a life-course change and majoring in political science.​ College was  interrupted by four years in the Navy where I served as a corpsman assigned to the U.S. Marines, while continuing to paint. Following his service, I returned to college at Ohio State University and entering local politics. In 1976 I joined the Jimmy Carter Presidential Campaign, ending up working in the Carter White House and US Environmental Protection Agency.

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By 1980 this brief political career was over, and I embarked on a new career as a political cartoonist. By 1984 I was a frequent contributor to the Washington Post. In 1987 I moved to Michigan to cartoon for nearly every paper in the state. After retirement, my cartoons were accepted into the collection of the Michigan State Library Archives as part of the state’s history.

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Following retirement from political cartooning, I returned to a lifelong passion of painting, initially in watercolor. Recently, I have expanded to working in one of the oldest media for painting, egg tempera. 

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My wife and I live in Norton Shores, Michigan where life on the water's edge with adjacent farmlands and forests serve to inspire all my paintings. This journey through politics and art has been like a box of chocolates, to quote Forrest Gump, "You never know what you're gonna get."