Joe Wagner lost his job as an architect, but found painting.

The germ of Joe Wagner’s vibrant oil pastels sprung from a dark chapter in his life.

In 1988, Wagner was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. The surgery and subsequent treatments he endured saved his life, but stole his career as an award-winning architect specializing in documenting and restoring historic buildings.

“I’m a very lucky person,” Wagner said. “I lost my job, but I’m alive and I have this.”

“This” is his painting, which he started doing at a friend’s suggestion in 2000. The only art he created previously was “little tiny drawings of a city that blooms” while in college.

Wagner’s Port Townsend friend offered to show his work, so he got cracking and assembled a series. It hung in a now-defunct restaurant, and that was the start of his painting full time.

“I would get together two shows and three shows the next few years, but now I’m down to just one show a year,” he said.

Wagner’s paintings burst off their paper in reds, hot pinks, turquoise and yellow, emitting a happy aura, much like the artist himself.

Wagner never titles his art – which he calls fantasies based on his architectural background – but he’ll share some of their hidden meanings and laugh while he does.

He is drawn to primary colors, combinations of which imbue each painting.

“I have to go with certain colors,” he said, “and certain colors I don’t use.”

Wagner favors pastel color sticks from India and buys them by the stacks. He tried to order only the colors he uses, but either no one understood his request or decided to honor it, he said.

An islander since 1984, Wagner works out of the modern home he designed. He sits at the family dining table in front of 19-by-24-inch paper that he loves.

Looking at the flat surface, he draws his idea with a pencil and then comes back and begins to paint, rotating the colors as he goes.

“It’s a lot like writing,” he said. “Sometimes I’m just hot and the colors run out. Sometimes it’s difficult and that may last for two days while I’m trying to work something out.”

By producing art, he said on his website, he “has found an inner peace that he feels is significant to his survival.”

Wagner cherishes time with his wife, Martha McDonald, and twin daughters Caroline and Vanessa, 18.

When he’s not preparing for an exhibit, he’s up at 5 a.m. for a little fly-fishing – preferably salmon and rainbows. He also does the design work for furniture pieces.

Art Grice has known Wagner for almost six years; they met through mutual friends and share a love of photography.

Grice will show Wagner’s latest series through Sept. 25 in his gallery, Arts Studio, on Fletcher Bay Road.

“Joe’s work is really interesting,” Grice said. “There are about 28 paintings, actual oil pastels. The colors are very rich and bright. The drawings are of architectural things, but rendered in a quirky way.”

Wagner is happy to fill Grice’s large studio with his work.

“The studio is an old garage. Art did a great interior,” Wagner said. “It has an incredible lighting system. It’s just a great place to show your art.”

Grice called his gallery “a sort of a collective effort. It’s pretty elegant looking and not snooty.”

He and a group of friends show work that has nothing to do with commercial viability, he said.

“We can schedule when we want. We have shows and a party opening, and people do come,” he said.

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Eye-popping pastels

“Oil Pastels on Paper by Joe Wagner” is on exhibit through Sept. 25 at Arts Studio. The studio is located at 7869 Fletcher Bay Rd., four driveways south of High School Road on the right. For more information call 842-1294.

To see more Wagner art, visit www.joefwagner.com or call 842-9368.