West Seattle artist surrounds herself with offbeat artsy objects

Like many collections at Kelly Lyles' home, the toy riding horses scattered around her front yard started on a whim. She picked one up at a garage sale because she "wanted to bounce on it."

She left it in the yard and didn't think about it until the mailman showed up with another one. He asked, "Don't you collect them?"

Unusual objects have a way of finding Lyles. Though she doesn't exactly hide. The 49-year-old artist is known around town for "Leopard Bernstein," her spotted Subaru station wagon topped with plastic statues of lions and leopards, and she has an outrageous fashion sense that extends to her décor.

Her West Seattle home is colorful, but beyond a pink door and banister, it's her art collection and arty objects that provide the pop.

Visitors to the downstairs bathroom gaze at an 11-year-old's prints of toilet art that Lyles discovered at the Ballard Art Walk. Her own painting series "The 12 Steps" hangs in the dining room. And much of her art collection is clustered in the living room, including a piece by Los Angeles artist Stacy Lande of a woman with her bouffant framed by flames and a scenic portrait by Seattle artist Gary Faigin.

The house itself has character, too, with a secret room behind a panel in the dining-room wall that serves as a laundry area, a fireplace that juts its brick backside into the kitchen and quirky doorways.

Lyles claims she has no overarching vision for her décor. She painted her bedroom dark green from a can she found in the garage. She put her art car trophies on the fireplace mantle because she didn't know what else to do with them.

"I have no rhyme or reason," she said. "If there's an empty spot on the wall, hang it up."

But her eclectic taste provides its own kind of order.

In her bedroom, accessories double as décor, where her hat collection — which numbers around 55 — hangs on two walls.

In the kitchen, an old microwave lavished with hearts and sparkles on the door opens up to reveal a love test. (Participants are instructed to 1. Breathe Deep. 2. Push Button. 3. Find Fate.)

Her living room includes one of her own pieces, a "Singles Scene" side table she painted in the trompe l'oeil style, with a game of solitaire, a personals section with circled ads, a pack of cigarettes and an ashtray.

"I'm just naturally flamboyant and gaudy," she said.

Lyles started painting in the mid-1990s and now makes a living painting out of a studio attached to her garage and teaching once a week at Bellevue Community College.

She lives on a minimal artist's salary and prefers to spend her limited income on art and travel rather than dinner or coffee.

"I'll eat leftovers seven days in a row if it will get me another piece of art," she said.

Many of her pieces are gifts from friends, and others she received in exchange for one of her own works. If she sees an artist she likes at a show, she gets in touch with him or her and works out a trade.

Lyles once held a full-time job as a graphic designer, but prefers her flexible artist's life and her knack for collecting.

"I think I've gone overboard the last few years," she said. "I should rotate it. [But] I'm not that ambitious."

Nicole Tsong: 206-464-2150 or ntsong@seattletimes.com