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Outside/Inside

Dates: Jun 4, 2010 to Jul 3, 2010

Participating Artist(s):
[Jump to the exhibit description...]

Susan Johnson, 'Life Cycles'

Johnson shows the broader subject of life, with its beginning and end, in a small plant. To give the actual subject more emphasize, she uses quite often a smaller frame within the image.
About the artist...

John Van Drael, 'Again Series, Still life #3'

Van Drael works with admiration for the Northern European realists and the American realists of the 20th Century.
About the artist...

Bobbie Jansen, 'Consequences of Desire'

Bobbie Jansen is currently working on an extensive series of shoes, representing those who wore them, giving a specific insight in their life.
About the artist...

Brizz Meddings, 'Palouze Springs'

Brizz Meddings is a photographer primarily interested in landscape. He uses the Northwest as an inexhaustible source of inspiration.
About the artist...

Gregory Pfarr, 'Gasche Mountain'

Greg Pfarr likes wide open views which show the history of a landscape. Here he used pastel because the medium lends itself so well for snow landscapes.
About the artist...

Lisa Caballero, 'Bread in Bag'

Lisa Caballero has a strong affinity with still life, painted in the orthogonal picture plane. In many of her still lives, the tabletop is parallel to the edge of the painting (or the frame). This means that the viewer is observing the set-up straight-on, or orthogonally.
About the artist...

Outside/Inside

Outside/Inside is an exhibit on the genres of landscape and still life painting. Both genres go back to Roman times; one sees them on murals in Pompeii as independent imagery as opposed to just being a background or part of a scene. In the Middle Ages both genres disappear in favor of religious painting; the Renaissance favors historical and religious painting over the subject choices of landscape and still life.

The genre of landscape painting (Outside) has been used as a background for religious scenes, historical painting and portraits for a long time. The atmospheric landscape backgrounds in Flemish painting are especially renowned. From the 1600's onwards in the Netherlands, the landscape developed as an independent genre. But it wasn't until the Impressionists took it to another level that landscape painting was elevated to the highest position in the hierarchy of subjects in painting.

The Northwest with its beautiful and varied landscape types of coastal scenes, pastoral hills and valleys, high mountains and desert seems to lend itself pre-eminently for landscape rendition. Outside/Inside features two landscape painters, Greg Pfarr and Susan Johnson both from Corvallis and photographer Brizz Meddings from Otis.

In the 17th Century in the Netherlands (again!) still life (Inside) comes into its own right. Still lives with a symbolic meaning became a strong and popular genre. Still life as it was put together then (a couple of pieces of bread, fruit, some cheese and a jug of milk) is currently enjoying a renaissance. A fair number of contemporary artists have taken the genre as their specialty or as an important part of their oeuvre. In the exhibit Outside/Inside four painters are working in the still life genre. Two artists, John Van Drael from Salem and Lisa Caballero from Portland, work in a style reminiscent of the  Old Masters, yet they are unmistakably contemporary. Their choice of objects, technique and color palette places them into today. The other two artists, Bobbie Jansen from Albany and W.E.Shumway from Corvallis, have a broader brushstroke and an approach that wasn't acceptable until modern art came to its full development.