I've been a member of the Portland Art Museum for years, and I try to catch every exhibit that comes through. If you haven't visited before, the PAM does a fabulous job selecting themes or artists for their shows, and they integrate a lot of social, cultural, and historical background to add context to the experience.
The headlining exhibit recently was California Impressionism, which I didn't realize was a genre, but the state's landscape is a fitting application for Impressionism's focus on light, space, and motion. California is such a special place to me, with memories of early childhood in the Bay Area, time on my grandparent's ranch, and visits with my beloved Alice, so the collection evoked a lot of nostalgia, particularly the pieces depicting Northern Californian landscapes of knotty oak and tufts of green and lilac shrubs.
I though the artists were particularly successful in capturing the violet, melancholy shadows in the eucalyptus forests, and I can feel twilight falling over the hills beyond. This piece below really reminded me of my grandparent's ranch.
My surprise love of the day was an exhibit by Ellsworth Kelley. He is best known for strong colors and color block themes, but I thought the below series of fruit and vegetable lithographs were fantastic.
My favorites were lemon and cala lilly. They are almost a take on still life, but so simple that they really capture the essence of the plants.
The third exhibit was Amanda Snyder, who was a Northwest artist that seems a bit of a chameleon in her work... I never would have known the below pieces were by the same artist. I liked her energetic interpretation of zinnias, but the clown was scary!
