Honoring with art

Of all the portraits Columbia police Detective Jeff Nichols has painted, Officer Molly Bowden’s was the hardest.

Nichols is used to the stresses of painting strangers, but the emotional strain was heightened as he tried to create a worthy tribute to the police officer all of Columbia came to know as just “Molly.”

“It was very important to me,” he said. “There was an intimacy there that you would experience with any colleague that you know.”

The memory of Bowden, who died in early 2005 after being shot three times in the chest during a traffic stop, is still very present at the police department.

Every officer wears or carries a button with a representation of her badge on it. “You can’t help but think about her and what it would be like to be in that situation,” Nichols said.

Nichols started painting in high school. His mother, an art teacher, encouraged his hobby.

His was first recognized for his art in high school, when he received an award for a colored ink drawing that had been entered in a competition. “It was exciting, because other than my friends commenting about my cartoons and stuff, I’d never been formally recognized,” he said.

He enrolled at Mineral Area College in southeast Missouri, intending to pursue an art degree and one day return to the Ozarks. But once in junior college, he said, he decided it was time to look into a career in something other than art.

“Unless you wanted to be an art teacher, there really wasn’t anything out there,” he said.

He transferred to MU, where he began and completed a degree in fisheries and wildlife. He enjoyed the outdoors, and had begun working part time for the Missouri Department of Conservation while at MU. He began working for the conservation department full time after graduation, he said, but it wasn’t paying the bills. Also after graduation, Nichols began volunteering in the Columbia Police Department’s police reserve program.

“I thought it’d be exciting to come down, and help officers, and ride in police cars,” he said with a laugh.

After about 15 months, Nichols decided to give police work a shot. “I fell in love with it,” he said.

He started off as an officer for MU police, and later took a position there on an investigative team. He worked on that team for four years before applying for a position with the Columbia Police Department.

But the desire to create art didn’t go away. Nichols started a custom art business, Natural Attractions, with his wife, Diana, in 1993. “I knew that I was going to either be in off-duty security, or do something different,” he said. “I thought I’d pursue art.”

He paints portraits on commission and likes doing landscapes and wildlife paintings. “Being able to draw and see something that resembles the image in my mind is exciting,” he said.

His talent has also been put to professional use at the police department, where he has been the resident sketch artist since 2002. “Composite sketches are a challenge,” Nichols said. “I’m drawing a picture from your mind’s eyes. A lot of things can go foul.”

For about seven or eight years, Nichols has been creating paintings for the police department.

Some of those paintings depict people whose service the department wants to recognize.

“This helps us keep track of our history,” said Columbia Police Chief Randy Boehm. “It helps us thank someone who has contributed significantly to the department.”

Nichols’ paintings of the department’s first black and first female officers hang in a hallway in the administrative area along with a portrait of Nero, a Columbia police dog who died last year. Most recently, Nichols finished portraits of two volunteers, Jim and Billie Silvey, who have contributed time and money to the department.

To paint, Nichols surrounds himself with music. “It depends on the mood but I like ‘old tunes,’ as my son would say, like Boston or Journey,” he said. “I may throw in a little country once in a while.”

The calm is therapeutic. “It transitions you from one frame of mind to another,” he said. “I don’t think about the autopsy I went to earlier that day.”

Nichols is well aware of the uncommon mix in his life. “You have to understand that this profession doesn’t draw artists,” he explained. “I’m an oddball in that sense.”

Last week, Nichols’ portrait of Molly Bowden was removed from its regular spot in the bedroom of her parents’ home in Rocheport.

It was displayed at the Hazel Kinder Lighthouse Theater in Columbia for an event that same day honoring first responders, such as the Columbia Fire Department and the police department.

Beverly Thomas, Bowden’s mother, said Nichols’ portrait, done in watercolor, is “neat to have.”

But that wasn’t her initial reaction. She and her husband, David Thomas, didn’t know Nichols was working on a painting of their daughter. When it was presented to them at the police department’s Christmas party in 2005, they were surprised.

“At first, it was hard to see it,” she said. “Seeing a picture of our daughter was very emotional — also knowing that someone had spent that much time on it.”