At around 12 years old, Kathleen McKinnon realized she wanted to be a teacher for the deaf after her church brought in a deaf congregation.
But during McKinnon’s college years in Florida, when she was studying learning disabilities, she had another realization.
“I was walking back to the education department, and I walked past the fine art department, and I stopped. I felt this longing for that,” she said. “The deaf community was my love and focus, but art is really my soul.”
A studio open to all
Every other Friday at 1 p.m., Kathleen McKinnon’s art classes for cancer survivors and supporters are held at Harmony Schoolhouse, her studio located at 11549 Los Osos Valley Road, suite 108, in San Luis Obispo. The studio is usually open on Saturdays from noon to 4 p.m. Send inquiries about session dates and times to kathleen@harmonyschoolhouse.com.
Still, McKinnon spent her career teaching, owning her own learning center for students with disabilities, working in educational consulting, and writing books and training educators on how to use them.
“Then I got cancer.”
In 2016, McKinnon was diagnosed and went through surgery and chemotherapy. About a year later she had her final surgery. During treatment, she spent a lot of time at the Hearst Cancer Resource Center in San Luis Obispo.
The Hearst Center and its counterpart in Santa Maria, the Mission Hope Cancer Center, offer support to patients, family members, and friends who are impacted by cancer. Visitors can try yoga and meditation, classes for applying wigs and makeup, and various support groups. McKinnon took advantage of art therapy, Tai Chi, and fitness training. Now, she’s giving back by teaching her own art classes to patients and their supporters.
“It’s such a lovely environment that there would just be days I would go, and it’s kind of like a living room. I would go and sit and just be because it was safe,” she said about the Hearst Center. “It was comforting. I knew that if I cried, they knew why I was. If I was angry, they knew. … It’s just kind of the whole gamut of emotions you have.”
Radiation, McKinnon’s last step, occupied her time every day for seven weeks. Then one day it was over, and she didn’t know what to do with herself.
To process her journey, McKinnon turned to her creative side, making a journal. Called her “healing companion,” the book is filled with collages representing her thoughts and feelings.
“The whole cancer thing brought me back to my true gift of creativity,” McKinnon said. “I started a new path of recognizing that it’s not what you create, it’s not the product. It’s the process of creating where you get your healing.”
She started teaching art classes at the Hearst Center and a few at Mission Hope, too. In 2020 she rented a studio in San Luis Obispo, called Harmony Schoolhouse, and now teaches her classes there. Upon request, McKinnon said she’s more than willing to teach again in Santa Maria.
One of her main focuses is mixed media. She said it opened her whole world because of how freeing it is. Intuitive collage classes happen every other Friday at 1 p.m. at Harmony Schoolhouse, which can fit up to eight people. Funds come from the Hearst Center, so there’s no cost to participants. Everybody is welcome, McKinnon added.
No creative experience is required because it’s “your subconscious talking,” she said. Classes start with McKinnon reading a poem out loud twice to spark inspiration.
“First so they can hear it, and then so they can really listen to it,” she said.
For 30 quiet minutes everyone rifles through magazines searching for anything that speaks to them. Colors, phrases, or pictures. Artists build their collages from what they’ve picked.
At the end of the session, everyone has the option to share how they reflected on the poem, what their images mean, and what they learned. McKinnon, who takes all her own classes, shares, too.
“We really become such a tight-knit group because we share each other’s lives and feelings,” she said.
On Saturdays she usually holds open hours at Harmony Schoolhouse, when people can pay to use supplies for personal creative time or to take McKinnon’s other art classes.
One session asks artists to create a piece with seven or eight layers, inevitably covering up previous work, but using a glazing technique so parts of the bottom layers are still visible. Sometimes artists are frustrated by the instruction to paint over what they’ve already created, but the exercise is meant to show how the artistic process can represent life’s changes.
“The whole idea is on the premise of no matter what your trauma is, cancer or something else, … you didn’t lose your story. Your beautiful life story is still there,” she explained. “It’s just changed, or you have to adapt.”
McKinnon urges artists to fight through the hard parts instead of thinking their artwork, or life, is ruined.
“It’s not what you created. It’s the process of getting there, and I swear you will come out with something,” she said.
Looking ahead, McKinnon is anticipating retirement so she can spend more time at the studio, her happy place.
“It’s like—at least my belief system—shit happens, right? But when something happens, it’s for a purpose. And the purpose is bigger than us.”
Reach Staff Writer Madison White at mwhite@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Nov 20 – Nov 27, 2025.
Kathleen is an incredible woman. Her art classes are a great help to all who attend.