Author: Michael Smith

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Write Around PAM: Larry Poons

Image Description: Larry Poons. “Open Country”. 1968. Acrylic on canvas. 84” x 204”. Large colorful painting with a thin wood frame. The background on the left two thirds is a muted rose color and the right third is a yellow orange color. A straight line separates the two colors with a few diagonal brush strokes on the pink that create a lighter ink color and a series of overlapping vertical brushstrokes on the edge of the yellow. There are two additional light yellow strokes above and out to the right. There is also an area of lighter yellow blended into the upper right corner. The bottom left of the painting is a lighter pink color with an organic line in the shape of a steeply sloping hill. Just below the slope is a series of six brush strokes—pink, white, yellow, red, purple, yellow.
Larry Poons (American, born 1937), Open Country, 1968, acrylic on canvas, 84 in x 204 in, Gift of the Virginia and Bagley Wright Collection. Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, 2011.98.3

Color can evoke such strong feelings and memories, and allow us to engage with our senses in new ways. This painting by Larry Poons calls to mind summer delights: cotton candy, rose petals, sorbets, sunsets, warm sand, early mornings, and more. As we get our first dose of fall rain and cooler temperatures this weekend,…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Shirley Gittelsohn

Shirley Gittelsohn (American, 1925–2015), Family Portrait, 1977, oil on linen, 72 in x 144 in, Gift of the Families of Shirley Gittelsohn and Ernest Bonyhadi. Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, 2017.49.1

Shirley Gittelsohn’s Family Portrait is featured in the current exhibition, Portraiture from the Collection of Northwest Art. The painting depicts her adult children, the family pets, her relaxed husband, herself, and their Cannon Beach gathering place. I’ve been drawn to different details of this piece over time, most recently focusing on Gittelsohn’s self-portrait. She is…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Sun Yi

Image description: Birds and Flowers, Sun Yi, hanging scroll; ink and color on silk, painting: 48 1/2 x 27 3/4 inches; mounting; 92 1/2 x 34 inches. Detail of scroll depicting two birds perched on flowering branches. A brown bark covered branch bisects the work from upper left slanting down the lower right. A male bird grips the branch at left, grey plumed tail held high while it bows its blue capped head at its mate at lower right. Its wings are bright blue, body gray and beak, legs and feet a brilliant red. They perch among creamy white magnolia blossoms and buds, tiny pale pink crabapple blossoms and leafy greenery. A large peach magnolia blossom with its many layered, ruffled petals is at lower bottom next to a violet peony bud. The scene is set against a khaki background.

This joyful, exuberant painting is an example of the rich vocabulary of auspicious symbols in Chinese art. The combination here of flowering peonies with pink crabapple and white magnolia blossoms, for example, can be understood as a visual-verbal rebus meaning “May your noble house be blessed with wealth and honor” (yutang fugui). The lively, full…  Read more

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Write Around PAM: Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer

Image Description: Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer, Antoine Monnoyer. “Still Life with Flowers, Fruits, a Parrot and a Monkey.” 1690/1699. Oil on canvas. 43 ⅜ “ and 59 ⅛”. Large painting with a dark background and brightly colored flowers with a thick gold frame with ornate filigree. A dark blue sky filled with a thin layer of flat clouds fills the background. Rolling hills can be seen in the distance with sunlight illuminating low clouds behind them. A dark tree trunk raises up behind a large plant with layers of leaves that are green at the tips and purple at the base. A tiny monkey hides in the darkness at the base of the plant. Only its head is visible. The monkey has black fur, a dark brown face, and small teeth. It looks towards the middle of the painting with its mouth gently open, teeth visible. To the right of the monkey is a large pile of fruit. Two large clusters of grapes are stacked high. Those on top are oval shaped, with a darker blue and purple color. The smaller grapes are round and a lighter blue color with purple accents. The grapes reflect the light source that seems to be illuminating the middle of the painting. Under the grapes are five dark blue oval plums, still on the branch with small dark green leaves. Two sets of three peaches are set below and above the grapes on the right. The peaches are cream and orange and blend into the dark shadows. Above the fruit is a large plant with pinnate leaves each with eight, serrated leaflets. Above the leaves, long thin green stems reach out and curve downward with eleven large blossoms with white centers and feathered red petals. Light reflects off the white portion of the petals creating a striking contrast to the dark shadows covering the leaves in the background. To the right is a large peony plant with sixteen buds and blossoms growing from thin green stems with light green oval leaves with strong veins. The large blossoms have dark pink centers and light pink outer petals and stand out, reflecting the light. Under the peonies is a smaller plant with large dark green leaves that have thin stems growing outward with groups of round flowers with white centers with a shiny black ball in the middle. Three groups to the left and back of the leaves are red and green striped. The groups in the middle and front are light pink with green stripes. Next to them are clumps of four-petaled star-shaped purple flowers. A bunch of these flowers extend upward past the peony leaves. The clumps at the top right are light blue and white. Next to them a dark colored parrot with a blue body, brown head, red forehead, black beak, and golden round eyes camouflage behind dark leaves. Behind the flowers, tree branches with large dark green leaves extend to the edge of the painting.
Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer (French, 1636-1699); Antoine Monnoyer (French, 1670-1747), Still Life with Flowers, Fruits, a Parrot and a Monkey, 1690/1699, oil on canvas, 43 3/8 in x 59 1/8 in, Museum Purchase: Support provided by Laura and Roger Meier through the Director's Fund and the North Building Campaign. Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, 2004.1

This still life painting by Jean-Baptiste and Antoine Monnoyer captures a richness of color, texture, shadow, and light. The blossoms and fruits evoke a bountiful energy that invites us to step further into the scene. Our own lives also offer places of abundance, richness, and delight, if we take a moment to step further into…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Nez Perce artist

Image description: Doll, Nez Perce artist, hide, beads, cloth and hair, 12 x 7 3/4 x 1 1/8 inches. A cloth doll clothed in a beaded hide dress with dark brown hair in pigtails. The doll’s creamy tan face shows wear and has beaded features. Single black beads sandwiched between two white beads compose the eyes, two black beads make up the nostrils and a longer line of red beads topping a shorter row make the mouth. Brown hair is gathered in two pigtails with yellow beads on either side of the head. The doll’s arms stand straight out from the body and have rounded ends representing hands. The doll wears a long hide dress in the same creamy tan as the body that has fringed cuffs and hem. A bright blue beaded necklace with four long peach and white shells is stitched around the neck. A sky-blue beaded belt with long ties wraps around the waist. Two bright blue beaded patches at the hips have hide tassels. Alternating yellow and black beaded diamonds appear just above the fringed hem. The doll wears hide leggings embellished with sky-blue beads and moccasins beaded in yellow and bright blue. The doll appears worn and much loved.

With the school year beginning, I began to think about children and how objects such as dolls are so universal. This Nez Perce doll was surely made for children in the image of women in her community. The clothing is composed of the same materials her relatives wore: soft hide for the dress, leggings, and…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Diego Rivera

Image description: Diego Rivera, La Escuela de Aire Libre (Open Air School), 12 1/2 x 16 5/16 inches; sheet: 15 3/4 x 22 3/4 inches, lithograph on cream wove paper. A landscape print rendered in shades of gray depicts a group of students, both young and old, gathered around a teacher who holds a book open on her lap. The teacher sits at left, slightly elevated above her students who gather in a circle around her. She had dark center parted hair that lays flat to her head, large eyes with a broad straight nose and full lips. She wears a simple high-necked, long-sleeved garment and holds up her right hand, palm out. Two younger students huddle near her to the left and have short, cropped hair and dark skin. Three more students are positioned at left. One is shown in profile wearing a long full sleeved shirt, cropped dark hair and has a garment or wrap gathered around him as he sits on the ground. Next to him to the right are two students, one in long braids and one in the act of writing in a book. The figures’ facial features all resemble those of their instructor. In the foreground, three students sit with their backs to the viewer. At center is a white-haired man sits hunched next to a small student and another in overalls. In the background there are two teams of horses and their drivers working the fields. At far left a guard on horseback with a rifle stands watch. At center, crops are gathered by two figures at a large rectangular container. At far right is another horse team with driver working the land. The print as a hand drawn quality, with the look of a detailed pencil sketch.
Diego Rivera (Mexican, 1886-1957), La Escuela de Aire Libre (Open Air School), 1932, lithograph on cream wove paper, image: 12 1/2 in x 16 5/16 in; sheet: 15 3/4 in x 22 3/4 in, Gift of Lucienne Bloch and Stephen Dimitroff. Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, 84.31.5

It’s back-to-school time! In this lithograph of 1932, Mexican muralist Diego Rivera celebrates the importance of “education for all” as one of the guiding tenets of the Mexican Revolution. Here, an Indigenous woman instructs a range of students from young children to elders in an open field. Behind her, laborers prepare the soil for planting,…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Lewis W. Hine

Image description: Lewis Hine, Making Stockings, gelatin silver print, 4 1/2 x 31/2 in. Vertical rectangular black-and-white photo of a young girl in profile sitting on a wood chair slightly tilted back that faces left, her hands and quiet concentration focused on a factory machine with stockings draped from it. She wears a dark dress, light apron, her hair appears to be in a low bun, and her lap is full of stockings which spill over to the floor and create a heap to her right. The background is out of focus and suggests disorderly conditions.
Lewis W. Hine (American, 1874-1940), Making Stockings, 1915, gelatin silver print, image: 4 1/2 in x 3 1/2 in; sheet: 7 in x 5 in, Bequest of Fae Heath Batten. Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, 1997.58.73

I think of photographer Lewis Hine every Labor Day. He was deeply affected by the long hours and low pay he earned while working to help support his widowed mother and siblings during the 1890s in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Hine first learned photographic processes around 1904 in New York City, where he also became active in…  Read more

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Write Around PAM: Maude Kerns

Labor Day weekend often represents an end to summertime vacations, but let’s hang on to that energy just a little bit longer through our writing this week. This painting by avant-garde artist and educator Maude Kerns carries the feeling of a late-summer road trip, with something new waiting beyond the bend in the road. Kerns…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Cameron Martin

Image description: Selvian, Cameron Martin, 53 x 40 inches, acrylic on canvas. A portrait-oriented work showing a close view of a rocky landscape in very pale shades of grays and white. Large chunks of rock jut out from the left in the foreground, haphazardly stacked and seemingly crumbling. The background contains more rough terrain in even paper monotone shades. A white border edges the top, bottom, and left side of the painting. A thin, black line runs over the image across the top, down right side and halfway across the bottom of the image.
Cameron Martin (American, born 1970), “Selvian,” 2012, acrylic on canvas, Gift of Camille Uhlir, 2021.32.1

The highly detailed work Selvian by Cameron Martin both excites and tricks my eye. Is this a photograph? A screenprint? A painting? Martin draws from multiple processes to create this piece and others in his Bracket series; he calls his approach “a kind of media collapse” that leaves us slightly disoriented about what we’re seeing.…  Read more

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Write Around PAM: Charles-François Daubigny

Image description: “Field of Poppies.” Charles-François Daubigny. 1860/1878. Oil on panel. 11 1/4 x 23 7/8 inches. This warm, rural landscape features a field of bright red poppies in the foreground and a dense row of leafy green trees along the horizon. The luminous sky--golden on the right, suggesting the rising sun just below the trees--melts into lavender on the left punctuated by a bright, white moon. On the right, a figure on horseback rides away from the viewer, following the diagonal line of a river behind the poppies and leading toward the center of the painting, where two people work the field. The painting style anticipates Impressionism in its attention to light and the use of visible, expressive brush strokes.
Charles-François Daubigny (French, 1817-1878), Field of Poppies, 1860/1878, oil on panel, 11 1/4 in x 23 7/8 in, Bequest of Miss Mary Forbush Failing. Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, 48.1.7

As we reach the end of August, with concerns of drought and fire risks continuing across the region, we also are so grateful for the bounty the Pacific Northwest summers offer. Charles-François Daubigny’s Field of Poppies, though painted in France, seems to capture this energy of summertime in the Northwest—expansive sky, green landscape, bountiful flowers.…  Read more