November Gallery Exhibition Opening Reception
November 2 | 2:00-4:00pm
Hoffman Center for the Arts | 594 Laneda Avenue | Manzanita
Free and open to the public
Since moving to Cascade Head 4 years ago, all of my landscape paintings have been based on this area. My intention is to capture in color and share the sublime, some may say transcendent, landscape of the Biosphere Reserve.
Of the four themes I have been working with, two of them are in this show: Vibration of Light, and Sitka Portraits.
The Vibration of Light series are my sensory experiences. They are about standing on the edge of a huge open space, seeing and feeling the light that falls on the landscape and illuminates the atmosphere. This light is vibrating with energy.
I have employed a “broken color” technique first used by the impressionists to elicit the feeling of the vibration. Broken color is a breaking up of a field of color into patches or spots so that the color looks more intense. And it is the post-impressionists, such a Seurat and Signac, who explored this technique most famously. For the most part, the paint is applied opaquely to reflect as much light as possible to the viewer.
The Sitka Portraits are very much like figures. Just as people acquire character with age, each of these Sitkas has a unique personality from a pose they grew into decades ago.
I especially like the way they reach out, reaching out on long limbs or short broken stubs of branches, all this is evidence of their long lives, and reflects the history of the storms they have weathered. As the Sitkas reach out for light and moisture, and dance in the wind, to me they symbolize our need as humans to reach out to be in connection to everything and everyone in our lives.
About the Artist
I’m a 3rd generation Oregonian, who studied art at the University of Oregon and then at the San Francisco Art Institute. While attending SFAI I began my lifetime relationship to landscape painting in oils.
In 1979 I started making oil colors in my garage and founded Gamblin Artists Colors in 1980. My painting practice influenced color making, color making influenced my painting. Through the work of being a painter and paint-maker I became a colorist, one who communicates primarily through color rather than with line or form. And I have exhibited this work in galleries since 1997.
My primary mentors were David Foster at the University of Oregon in the late 1960’s, and Wolf Kahn in New York and Vermont in the 1990’s.
Professionally trained as a jeweler and coppersmith, my artworks are partly driven by the medium itself. Coppersmithing is a slow, labor intensive process consisting of repeated rounds of annealing and hammering the metal into a pleasing form. My jewelry is a combination of cast elements, rolled and pressed parts, hammered and tooled elements, and gemstone settings all fabricated into fascinating fine art jewelry.
Growing up out in the country outside the rural town of Woodland, Washington and being immersed in nature was an amazing life experience. My love of nature’s renewal is combined with a diverse spiritual quest that has always paralleled my creative vision. I am firmly rooted in nature, an eclectic spiritually, alternative belief systems and an abundance of creativity. My art serves as a voice into sacred inner worlds and as a place of insight and revelation. All these experiences bears witness on my art and support me creatively.
I was born in late May, with four planets in Gemini. That means four sets of twins competing for attention in my head. At age six I decided to be an artist; my creativity was my voice. I began art classes at age 10 at the Portland Art Museum and went on to receive a BFA in Jewelry & Metalsmithing and a MFA in Sculpture. I have worked as a graphic artist, fine artist, photographer, bench jeweler, activity director, 1% for Arts public artist, and an art instructor. My creativity is a passion I have followed my entire life.
What inspires me the utmost is the call of freedom, a sense of impermanence, and the expansive realm of human consciousness that steps into that vast Unknown. I glean the pieces of my compositions and weave them together with the energy of spirit, heart and mind. My whole being craves this process of creation that originates internally, from within my soul, using externally gathered materials and images to compose beautiful and expressive works of art.
My third grade teacher wrote on my report card “Peggy loves art.” I learned a very long time ago what to call the feeling.
I majored in Art Education at Lewis and Clark College, taught several years and went back to art school at PNCA when I was 40. I didn’t think then about how much time I had left to do the work, but now I do. I don’t know if that happens to others as they age, but making art is really all I ever wanted. Now still, I want to see how far I can go before I can’t.
This work began with the vision of large simple shapes crowded into fields of thread-drawn flower-like marks. I used recycled Japanese silk scrap secured with embroidery thread. I experimented as I went.
The work isn’t all about flowers; it’s about research and recycling, and drawing and stitching obsessively with thread. l worked through cramped hands, burning eyes, and lower back pain. In the last two years I broke a vertebrae in my back and had open heart surgery, but whenever I could, I stitched. I started the series with a concept and kept working at it as time progressed and stitches accumulated. I believe that art is in the making, not so much as what viewers make of it. When I look at another artist’s work I wonder what I don’t know that she does. And I think about all I’ve learned about my work’s meaning just by doing the work.
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November 3–Gallery Exhibition Opening Reception
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Situated on the main street in Manzanita just a few blocks west of Highway 101, the Hoffman Center Art Gallery is located across the street from the North Tillamook Library.
