Portraits find purpose in DWI tragedies

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - A New Mexico artist is applying her passion for brushes and oils to the preserve the lives of the men, women and children killed on the state's roads by drunken drivers.

Artist Nikki Smith Wilden has been painting for more than 40 years. She's had her challenges painting for two presidents and having her artwork hanging in galleries, but it's nothing like what she's now facing.

Smith Wilden paints the faces of people killed in drunken-driving crashes. She painted more than 50 portraits so far.

"I've gotten little babies up to a woman who was 80-some years old that was killed," she said. "You kind of feel like you know them as you paint them."

As she did the brush stokes on a Scott Costley, she felt he was a kid who enjoyed life. And she was right.

Costley, 21, was killed in a collision with a suspected drunk in September in Gallup.

"It's been tough every day," Todd Costley, his father, told KRQE News 13.

Smith Wilden started painting the portraits three years ago prompted by a horrific crash on Interstate 25 southeast of Santa Fe. On that night Dana Papst was drunk and driving west in the eastbound lanes when he crashed head-on into a family's minivan killing the parents and three kids.

Smith Wilden had passed through that stretch of I-25 just minutes before the crash. What bothered her, she said, was that more people knew about Papst than his victims.

"They knew there was five people killed and some kids; that's all they knew," she said. "They didn't know their name; they didn't know how old they are, what they looked like.

"I thought that's so unfair."

Smith Wilden spends up to months painting the portraits and frets over getting the details right.

"The eyes to me are the most important, and you've got to get the nose just right, their mouth, their teeth, their ears, everything," she said.

Smith Wilden hoped she got it right when she presented the painting of Scott Costley to his father in Gallup. Costley was nearly speechless as he hugged her.

"The painting is going to be nice to have because it kind of gives us a little more--a lot more--meaning than a photo because it was made for a purpose," Costley said as he fought back the tears.

Through Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Smith Wilden volunteers her time and pay for the $800 is costs her to paint a portrait typically valued up to $5,000. She's always looking for more donations and volunteer artists.

More information is available from her Artists Against Drunk Driving Web site.