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Write Around PAM: Grandma Moses

Sugaring Off, Dark Sky, Grandma Moses, 15 ½ x 19 ¾ inches, oil and tempera on commercial canvas board. A horizontal, rectangular landscape painting depicting a bustling outdoor winter scene. The painting is a bird’s eye view of people collecting and boiling maple sap to create syrup or sugar amid snow covered ground and trees. At bottom right are two men tending a fire on which a huge black, steaming cauldron boils. At bottom left, another man collects sap from a gray tree with bare, snow-covered branches. At bottom center two children play in front of an evergreen tree. A man and woman make sugar candy in the snow to their left. The center of the painting includes men driving horse drawn sledges containing more sap, children playing, people carrying buckets, people collecting sap from the many trees. A large, rambling, dark red house sits at right center and a light gray house is at left. Snow covered hills continue in the background and show more horse drawn sledges heading towards the action in the center of the painting. A stand of evergreen trees is at left in the distance. A dark gray sky completes the scene. The people wear shades of brown and black with many wearing brick-red and blue. The painting’s style is child-like with simply drawn faces and flat shapes and figures.

Tomorrow marks the winter solstice and the shortest day of the year. We invite you to spend some time reflecting on and writing about this arrival of winter, using this piece from Grandma Moses as inspiration. Before or after you write, learn more about her life and work through the National Museum of Women in…  Read more

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Write Around PAM: Miyashita Zenji

As we move towards the winter solstice and our nights continue to lengthen, we are exploring the gifts and challenges of the darkness, along with the expectant hope of the return of the light. This piece by Miyashita Zenji feels like the perfect companion for this time. We invite you to spend some time sitting…  Read more

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Write Around PAM: Anne Ryan

Untitled, Anne Ryan, 11 ¾ x 15 ¾ inches, oil and charcoal on mounted board. A horizontal, rectangular painting featuring abstract brushwork and thick, textured paint application in brown, yellow, orange, blue, gray, and black. At the center are a grouping of narrow, vertical blocks of color. The orange, brown, and yellow areas are thickly and roughly painted with charcoal line patterns created on top of the paint. Two bright yellow vertical blocks have vertical black charcoal lines. Between the two yellow are a dark terracotta block and a deep muted burgundy block. To the left of this central grouping are two more terracotta shapes, one with diagonal charcoal stripes. At far right of the center grouping is a deep blue, almost black shape with flecks of red next to a thin brushstroke of dark paint with X markings made of charcoal. Beneath the vertical shapes are undulating black brush strokes that seem to bookend the central brushwork. Gray, white, and blue paintwork surround the central shapes blending into taupes and whites at the outer edges and top. Paint is applied thickly and creates a highly textured painting.

The winter chill has descended on much of Oregon, with cold rain, clouds, snow, and wind greeting us most days. Today we are finding some warmth and light in this piece by Anne Ryan. We invite you to take some time to write and reflect on the ways you are nurturing warmth and light in…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Kirsten Furlong

Promise and Purpose, the Ancestor’s Dream, Kirsten Furlong, 60 x 60 inches, collage, ink, graphite and colored pencil on paper. A square black, white and gray work depicting a wood stork with outstretched wings and a long bill, a patterned snake and large sweet potato. The black wood stork, shown from the side and facing right, occupies the left half of the work with its wings and legs extended as if in the act of landing. It has a small smooth head with a long bill and feet and its surface is pattern in geometric and organic shapes. The stork’s form is segmented into four pieces that have been collaged together. To the lower right is a large sweet potato sprouting leaves and other partially obscured sweet potatoes. Underneath the potato is the black snake with curlicue patterned head and scaly body. The background is divided into areas of various patterns rendered in soft gray within sections that radiate from different points on the work.

“Promise and Purpose, the Ancestor’s Dream” was informed by multiple visits over the last twenty years to Lowndes County, Alabama (where my partner’s parents live) and my conflicted feelings experiencing the flora and fauna of their land while also considering the violent history of Lowndes as a mixed-race (Black and white) individual. The title of…  Read more

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Museum Store Sunday Is November 29—We Need Your Support

On Sunday, November 29, 1,600 Museum Stores representing all 50 states, 24 countries, and five continents will offer inspired shopping inside your favorite museums and cultural institutions and online.  “The message behind Museum Store Sunday is more important than ever,” said Portland Art Museum Store Manager Michelle Betcone. “The pandemic-related closures and capacity limits have…  Read more

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Write Around PAM: Shima Tamami

Tori B (Birds B), from James A. Michener, The Modern Japanese Print: An Appreciation, Shima Tamami, 15 1/16 x 10 9/16 inches, color woodblock print with embossing on torinoko paper. A vertical, rectangular print depicting three simple, stylized birds with long necks. A bird in the foreground is positioned so that its body, neck and head create a “J” shape that occupies much of the print. The upturned tail aligns with the left edge of the print, its body swoops down to touch the bottom edge and the neck and head with open beak rise up to the upper portion of the print at the right edge. This bird’s body is mostly a solid black with a gray and black-striped tail. Its eye and open beak are highlighted in white. Behind this bird are two more, both with the elongated necks and beaks of the first. They stand with bodies in the center of the print and heads and beaks at the top. The bird on the left is shown in profile with its beak facing left. It has a black body and a small striped tail. The bird at right overlaps its companion with its open beak and head facing right. Its body and wings are depicted in contrasting textures in black and very pale blue. All three birds overlap a background that is divided into three parts. The upper half and a wide strip of the lower part of the print have a medium gray wood grain texture. The section in the middle is a lighter gray with vertical, reed-like markings.

Oregonians have been asked to pause social gatherings to help curb the spike in COVID-19 cases across our state over the next two weeks. How can we step outside in our imaginations instead? Both the beauty found in this piece by Shima Tamami and the honking of geese and flitting of birds outside our windows…  Read more

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Celebrate Portland Book Festival with virtual pop-up readings, Raven Leilani talk, Zoom Happy Hour

During the month of November, Literary Arts celebrates authors and Portland’s community of readers through a virtual edition of their annual Portland Book Festival, presented by Bank of America.  Literary Arts is a community-based nonprofit with a mission to engage readers, support writers, and inspire the next generation with great literature.   For the past five…  Read more

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Write Around PAM: Childe Hassam

New England Road, Childe Hassam, 34 x 34 inches, oil on canvas. A square painting depicting a man walking along a rural road in autumn. The road is positioned diagonally across the painting starting at the lower left corner where it is broad and wide and continues to center right where it narrows slightly, ending at the horizon line a third of the way from the top. Shadows from nearby trees fall across the road’s pale, tan surface. The top third of the painting is a blue sky with drifting, billowy clouds in pale, watery blues and whites. The center area of the work features a stand of trees with leaves of rusty red and yellow amid green grass, shrubbery, and fallen leaves. At center, a man stands with his back turned wearing a light-colored shirt, a dark vest, light blue trousers and a hat. He carries an ax as though he has been chopping wood at the roadside. Paint is applied with small brush strokes and colors are layered creating a soft effect without hard edges.

Fall is deepening in the Northwest, and the natural world is letting go in preparation for winter. Amid the shifting social, political, racial, and economic hardships we are facing as a community, our seasons are shifting as well, offering us invitations to write and reflect on change. Childe Hassam’s New England Road captures this shifting…  Read more

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Write Around PAM: Gonzalo Fonseca

Two Figures with Still Life, Gonzalo Fonseca, 49 1/8 x 35 inches, oil on burlap. A vertical, rectangular painting representing two, geometric, abstract figures. The boxy figures take up most of the painting which is rendered in tones of gray with black outlining. The figure at left has a circle for a head with a small crescent shape positioned just to its left. Squared off shoulders lead into a rectangular body that disappears behind another tall rectangle in front of it. A thin, upright rectangle is positioned separately near the bottom left. At right, another figure has a boxy head and uneven square shoulders with a slim bit of straight body visible behind the rectangle in front of it. That rectangle has a triangular chunk taken out of its lower portion, perhaps suggesting a table leg. A dark gray, slanted square is positioned in its upper portion and contains three small abstract shapes. The figures and the table representation are a pale gray with visible brushwork while the background is rendered in deeper gray.

This Tuesday, November 3rd, 2020, is U.S. Election Day. We Oregonians fill out our ballots at home, return them by mail or by drop box, and then we wait. The results—the decisions we will have made collectively as communities and as a country—will likely have reverberations here at home, at our very own kitchen tables.…  Read more

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Artists Carrie Mae Weems and Marie Watt among new slate of Museum trustees

The Portland Art Museum welcomed prominent artists Carrie Mae Weems and Marie Watt to its Board of Trustees in its virtual annual meeting earlier this month.  “I am so honored and excited that Carrie Mae Weems and Marie Watt accepted our invitation to help lead our institution at this crucial time,” said Brian Ferriso, Director…  Read more