Artist Alexandra Feit, 59, died in hospice care Feb. 4 at her home in Port Townsend, Washington. She had colon cancer for six and a half years and had moved south for treatments. Her husband Bud Barber said she "laughed and smiled right to the very last day. She never quit."

Feit earned a BA and MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and her abstract paintings were displayed in contemporary art galleries and shows across the country and later in Alaska and the Yukon. She lived in San Francisco for about 20 years and worked in tech support and as a waitress to support her art, and along with her first husband, owned a Brazilian restaurant.

Feit was 40 and divorced when she took a road trip to Alaska, saw Haines, and it changed her life, Barber said. They met on the Chilkat Cruises shuttle to Skagway when he was an engineer on the boat and she was a tour guide in Liarsville. "I tried to talk with her, but didn't get very far," he said, until he fixed her chainsaw. He helped clear the trees for her driveway on what he later realized was their first date. She wrote a poem about it, called "Chainsaw Love." They snowshoed to their wedding at the Chilkat State Park cabin on Feb. 29, 2008.

Feit enjoyed guiding for Rainbow Glacier Adventures and Alaska Nature Tours, and working on their home, in her art studio and in the garden. She crafted their kitchen cabinets in the school woodshop class and built the outhouse.

When her mostly white, layered wax encaustic paintings were exhibited at the Haines Sheldon Museum, Feit's artist statement read, in part, "I am interested in getting the viewer to slow down and enjoy the richness of quiet."

Extreme Dreams gallery owner John Svenson said her artwork was "really eclectic" and "eye opening" for the Haines' art scene. "Alexandra was incredible and an asset to our gallery because we like displaying art that makes people think," he said.

Feit also volunteered as a "big" for Big Brothers Big Sisters, at the library and for Haines Friends of Recycling. After her husky Rio died, she and Barber walked and fostered dogs for Haines Animal Rescue Kennel.

She enjoyed hiking and annual summer trips to Sitka and Tenakee with Barber in their boat.

Alexandra Feit was born May 15, 1961 in Chicago to mathematicians Walter and Sidnie Feit. Her father, who died in 2004, taught at Yale and was famous for the Feit-Thompson Theorem. She grew up in Connecticut, and learned to speak French and Spanish when her family lived abroad for her parents' work.

Perhaps ironically, "she hated statistics," Barber said. Initially doctors gave her months to live, but she was determined to beat those odds, and did. In a commentary in a 2015 Hospice of Haines newsletter, Feit wrote of living with a terminal illness: "All the small stuff is gone...each day is a gift. We are very grateful most of the time. In some odd, weird way, I am the happiest I've ever been."

In Port Townsend, she painted their house inside and out, made a garden, walked their dog Tenakee, and took a major role in her own healthcare, physically and spiritually. "She would say, 'My job is to work at my health,'" Barber said. She volunteered at the Port Townsend library and was in a Buddhist book group.

In addition to husband Bud Barber and her brother Paul of Odessa, TX, she leaves her mother Sidnie Feit in CT.

Barber hopes to have a potluck to celebrate her life in Haines this summer.