Please see my website at http://billsharppaintings.com
My paintings are still on view at Portland’5 Centers for the Arts along with fellow artists, Shawn Demarest and Beth Kerschen. The show will be up until Feb 3. If you’re in the neighborhood, please stop in. The lobby, where the show is hanging is open until 5pm during the day as well as performance nights. Below are some snaps of the installation.
Portland’5 Centers for the Arts – 1111 SW Broadway, Portland, OR 97205
Another new painting to be included in the upcoming exhibit, “Surroundings” with Portland artists, Shawn Demarest and Beth Kerschen at Portland’5 Performing Arts Center Dec 2018 through Jan 2019.
As I’ve been making work related to the upcoming show themed “Surroundings” I have not been able to ignore the increasing evidence of homelessness in the urban landscape of Portland and it’s started to show up in the paintings. If I divorce myself from the social and personal tragedy of it and look at it from a visual perspective, it is an undeniable ‘texture’ to our city’s landscape. I watch as camps come and go and come again. They spread out as other campers join and the detritus they generate grows as time passes with no sanitation services. It’s troubling and it’s an undeniable part of our current landscape.
I’ve been working on this painting for 6 months. Centennial Mills viewed from the Broadway Bridge as it was several years ago. It was a favorite site of mine in Portland that no longer exists. All that remains is the building with the water tower. The city had plans to redevelop it but they gave up and, over the last year or two, most of it has been torn down.
I’m sad to see so much of what I consider to be Portland being demolished and gentrified.
This piece and several other of my recent paintings are now available at Prographica / KDR Gallery in Seattle. If you don’t see any of my work displayed, feel free to ask about it.
.
.
I have a show of urban landscape paintings coming up towards the end of next month at Brian Marki Fine Art in Portland, OR. I’ve been chained to the easel over the last several months painting for the show. As soon as I have all the details, I’ll post them here. I hope, if you’re in town, you’ll come by and have a look.
I went out painting with a friend last week and came across a small herd of cows lounging in the sun. They were the same type of cows that I often see in Roos Schuring’s paintings. She’s a fantastic painter in Holland. I wrote about her back in Aug 2012.
So I decided to see if I could paint these cows ala Roos Schuring.
.
I delivered the paintings for my first solo show in many years to Brian Marki Fine Art yesterday. I have one more piece I’d like to finish for the show, if Brian doesn’t mind hanging a wet painting.
The image above is the piece I’d like to finish for the show, in it’s current state. It still seems a little chaotic but that is true to my current experience. I don’t usually put a lot of thought into titles. They’re mainly just for me to keep them straight in my mind but, given recent events, this piece has begun to occur for me as a view into my life. I need to reconstruct a new life out of what appears to me now as the wreckage of my old life and this painting expresses that for me. It may not be pretty but it holds promise.
I have to say that, in spite of the fact that I’m not often referred to as a real “up” kind of person, I have been surprised at my ability to find positive meaning in my wife’s death.
For one thing, it was such a privilege and relief to be able to see Leslie on to a peaceful and meaningful death. It was the perfect completion of our relationship. Four years ago, when Leslie’s cancer became metastatic, the primary purpose of my life became to see to it that Les was taken care of and had a good death and I lived to fulfill that promise. So many women have to go through this alone. I am grateful that Les was loved and cherished and nurtured and adored to her last minutes. Well beyond her last minutes, in truth.
I have also been overwhelmed with love and support from friends and family. My relationships have been enriched by Les’ passing. I have made new friends who have made profound contributions to my life.
Leslie continues to nurture me even in death. I was rooting through the freezer and found a treasure. Two containers of Les’ wonderful beef stew.
My stomach and heart are both full of love. I miss Leslie’s physical presence but I feel her with me all the time. I’m a very fortunate man.
I went with a friend to paint at the Portland Train station – Union Station. It was supposed to rain so I proposed we meet there and paint from under the cover of the overpass across the street from the station. It worked out pretty well. It rained hard and I only got a little wet (from a drain in the overpass) This is the resulting painting.
.
.
The hunting season is over on Sauvie Island, and I headed over to paint last weekend. Unfortunately, when I was half way there, I realized I had forgotten to pack any panels to paint on. This is the second time I’ve done this. I suppose age is catching up with me. Rather than turn back, I continued on knowing that I had my watercolor paintbox and sketchbooks along.
I went to a part of the island where I haven’t painted for several years and found a nice spot along the Multnomah Channel ( a narrow side channel of the Wilamette River, and started the piece above as several sailboats and fishing boats came and went. While I waited for the colors to dry on this one, I started the one below, of the same subject.
I moved on down the road and did one more from a spot I painted a few years ago. It’s a view of the famous volcano, Mt St Helens, across the cow patures.
I was hoping for some cows but they didn’t show up until later
.
.
The weather has been especially wonderful in Oregon this spring. Although I’m tied to my home office during the work week, I’ve stolen enough time to do a few little studies outside. These two were painted from the deck of my office.
.
.
This studio painting was painted from sketches I’ve done over recent years. Montgomery Park dominates the night sky with it’s neon sign. It is a landmark that can be seen from many view points around the North West neighborhoods of Portland.
.
.
This relatively new neighborhood sprung up seemingly overnight on the South West shore of the Wilamette River in Portland. The most prominent resident is the Oregon Health Sciences University Hospital. The main hospital is on a hill overlooking the river and the two campuses are connected by a tram (not pictured here).
I’ve done some sketching from the upper campus, looking down to this one. Here is one I did in 2010, when there were fewer buildings.
.
The old building in the foreground seems to be one of the last in the quickly gentrifying Peal District of NW Portland.
Feeling a pull to the dark side with this one.
.
This is a painting of a barge while being built at the Vigor Industries Shipyard on Swan Island, Portland, OR. I believe the barge is a double hulled oil barge in service in the Seattle area.
I could hang out here and draw for years, if they’d let me. Unfortunately the only times I’ve been there were during the Industry and Art shows, which were held in one of their hangars the last two years.
.
REMINDER. The opening reception for
OIL, WATER and INK: Artistic Interpretations of the Built Environment
with paintings by Shawn Demarest, prints by Beth Kerschen and paintings and sketchbooks by me is tonight,
Feb 7th from 5:30 til 8:30
at
AIA Center for Architecture. 403 NW 11th Ave Portland. (NW 11th and Flanders).
.
.
.
.
.
.
This neighborhood market, at the corner of NW 23rd and Thurman, is one of the last buildings, in this neighborhood, that has not been gentrified. It was kind of a seedy area, when I first moved to Portland, about 30 years ago. Most of the street is now lined with boutiques and restaurants and in my landscaping days, I worked on some of the properties here. There’s a great breakfast place across the street called Besaws, which is in a building that goes back to 1903. The market building looks to be of the same vintage.
.
.
.
This is a scene at the Vigor Industrial Shipyard on Swan Island in Portland. I’ve had fun experimenting with different ways of applying paint. I used a brayer, strings soaked in paint, spatula, various knives, a whisk broom, etc. I did not use brushes very much on this piece.
I’ve been painting larger pieces on linen tacked to my wall. I leave a 4″ border around it for attaching it to stretcher bars. Once I get to this point, the border becomes distracting and I need to take it down and stretch it to really see what it looks like and to make sure the image fits the stretcher properly. I may change it after it’s stretched.
.
.
I’ve had this one on the easel for quite a while but I think I’m done with it now. What caught my eye was the interlocking shapes of the upper part of the building with the shapes caused by reflections in the lower part. It was a lot of fun to paint and I’m kind of sorry I’m done with it.
.
.
Continuing with studies for a large oil painting. It’s raining hard outside and I’m very happy to have this to do in the studio.
.
.
I’ve been doing studies for some larger oil paintings. I always seem to work more freely with watercolor and I’d like to learn ways to incorporate some of that into the oils.
.
.
I’m still finding beauty in these unusual forms.
.
.
.
This is a view of the under side of the Fremont Bridge, looking across the Wilamette River from the west bank to the east. This is a studio painting although I’ve painted this same view plein air and posted some studies, for this painting, a couple of weeks ago.
.
Thanks everyone who traveled out to the western frontier of the Portland Open Studios tour, over the last 2 weekends. Although I didn’t get as many visitors as I may have gotten, were I more centrally located, I got the sense that many folks who came by did so because they’d looked up my website and liked what they saw.
I also had the opportunity to meet some followers of my blog, which is always great.
A few paintings found good homes, including one of my favorite recent pieces:
I’d have to say that the most popular work I had displayed was my sketchbooks. It’s always fun (and a little nerve wracking) to share them because they’re so personal. Here’s a panorama of the sketchbook table.
Thanks again to Portland Open Studios and all the art enthusiasts who visited.
This past weekend was the first weekend of the 2012 Portland Open Studios tour. I worked on this study of the studio corner while a slow but steady stream of folks perused my recent oil paintings and sketchbooks.
Thanks everyone who came by or checked my website. I’m looking forward to the second weekend of the tour.
I’ve been working on this painting for the last several months. I’m declaring it finished, even though I could probably go on tweaking it for another couple of months. It will be in the studio during the Portland Open Studios, over the next two weekends.
My studio will be open on October 13, 14 and 20, 21 from 10AM to 5PM, as part of the 2012 Portland Open Studios . Full color guides with map to artist’s studios ($15) or maps alone ($5) are availble at the link above or at New Seasons Markets all over town.
I’ll have work displayed and in progress in the studio. I hope you’ll stop by and see what I’m up to.
Bill Sharp - paintings blog 