Needlepoint work of Rembrandt painting took Henderson resident 35 years

It took her 35 years, but Kathy Burke of MacDonald Ranch finally finished her large reproduction of a Rembrandt masterpiece — using yarn instead of oil paint and a needle instead of a brush.

The piece, illuminated by a small floodlight in Burke's living room, measures about 4 feet by 2.5 feet and replicates Rembrandt's 1642 painting "The Night Watch," a group portrait of a militia company. In its matted frame, the needlepoint work measures about 5 feet by 3.7 feet.

"It doesn't look too far off, I'm telling you," Burke said of the image's accuracy.

For a visual reference, she used a coffee table book on Rembrandt, which featured a double-page spread of "The Night Watch."

She said when friends come over and see her needlepoint piece displayed on its iron easel stand, they can't tell that it was created with yarn.

"When it's dark, you don't see the Plexiglas," she said. "It actually looks like a painting. The faces were the most challenging. They really look like faces, and some of them are sideways. Each time I worked on a face, it would take me hours to do a face."

Burke, 72, first started working on the piece after acquiring the needlepoint canvas for it in 1980.

"It took about a couple of thousand hours and then running out of yarn six or seven times," she said. "I had never really done a needlepoint before. It's a lot easier than knitting and crocheting. I never learned knitting and crocheting."

The canvas already bore the image of the painting, and Burke followed the color patterns with yarn, which she kept grouped and numbered in plastic bags based on their shades.

"I would take it with me everywhere I went — to the race track, to the doctor's office, basketball games," Burke said. "It was kinda part of me, and then I got divorced in '89, and I put it down many times. I couldn't get into it. I finally started working on it again in the last year or two to get it done."

Burke said her daughter Cindy Lyter and her husband, Steve Lyter, who live in California, were taken aback after it was completed.

"They had completely forgotten about it," Burke said.

Cindy Lyter, 52, said she was 15 when her mom began working on the project.

"I remember her going to the store and getting that," she said. "She worked on it for quite a number of years all the time. She took that thing around with her everywhere she went. Then everyone got busy in their life — she got busy and put it aside."

Lyter said when Burke finished the piece and had visited her in California in May, they went to a Hobby Lobby store to have it framed, on Lyter's tab.

"I said, 'This is a masterpiece,' " Lyter said.

— To reach Henderson View reporter Cassandra Keenan, email ckeenan@viewnews.com or call 702-383-0278. Find her on Twitter: @CassandraKNews.