(Above: Detail from Littoral People — Play at Yachats, by Erik Sandgren)
By Randi Bjornstad
Margaret Coe’s The Road Less Traveled
Landscape paintings by a dozen dozen artists are on the walls of the Karin Clarke Gallery, and artist Margaret Coe, who is one of them, enjoys the continuity she sees in the selections in this show, called Oregon Landscapes.
“Many of these paintings have a real Northwest look, with earth colors and similar landscape settings,” Coe said. “But that’s a general feeling, it’s not as if everyone’s work looks like everyone else’s. It’s more of a feeling of a ‘school of art’ that has developed over time.”
The artists represented in this show are a mix of familiar ones that the gallery frequently represents, as well as a couple of new people she hasn’t shown before, gallerist Karin Clarke said.
“Some of these people I hadn’t shown for a few years, and I had lost touch with them a bit,” Clarke said. “And then there were some new people whose work I had been admiring for quite awhile. So I thought it would be a good time to do a show focused on Oregon landscapes and bring them all together.”
One of the most striking paintings in the show is The Road Less Traveled, which Coe finished just recently.
“It’s based on some photos that I took, but as I painted, it just took on a lot of changes — I tweaked the idea so much that it turned out entirely differently from when I started,” she said. “The original scene was much more dense, and I chose one fir tree to be the point of focus and opened up the rest of the space and added the road — like an old logging road — and a person walking along it all alone. I think of it more as a symbolic Oregon landscape, more mysterious and dark and textured as you look at it.”
As she often does, Clarke has included several paintings in this show by both per artist parents. Coe is her mother, and her late father is Mark Clarke.
Karin Clarke also has two paintings of her own on display.
Other artists familiar to the walls of the Karin Clarke Gallery are Craig Spilman and Bets Cole from the greater Eugene area, Erik Sandgren and Humberto Gonzalez from the Portland area, and Robert Schlegel from Banks.
The newer-to-the-gallery group includes Robert Gamblin, founder of the line of Gamblin art supplies; Jodie Garrison of the arts faculty at Western Oregon University; James Kroner, who lives in Washington state; and Eugene artist Heather Halpern, founder of the Whiteaker Printmakers.
Oregon Landscapes
When: Through April 25
Where: Karin Clarke Gallery, 760 Willamette St., Eugene
Gallery hours: Noon to 5:30 p.m. Wednesday through Friday; 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday
Information: 541-684-7963 or online at karinclarkegallery.com
Venus — 2014, by Robert Gamblin
