Please see my website at http://billsharppaintings.com
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.
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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.
There’s one more week to catch my show at Brian Marki Fine Art.
Thanks to everyone who stopped by and especially for those who will take home a painting next week.
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Last night was the opening reception for my show of paintings at Brian Marki Fine Art. It was great to see old friends and meet new ones. Thank you to everyone who came out.
Brian did a really great job of hanging and lighting the work. I hardly recognized the paintings.
The most frequently asked question was, why are they called dolphins? To which I responded, why are the sides of a boat called gunwhales? I do not understand nautical terms.
Here are a few pictures from the reception. The show is up until the end of August. If you’re nearby, please stop by and let me know what you think.
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.
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A friend and I drove out to Ranier, OR to paint at the defunct Trojan Nuclear Plant (now a park) but there was not much there we were interested in painting so we drove on into the nearby town of Ranier, which is right on the Columbia river. These 2 paintings were done from a parking lot in the town.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
Alex, if you’re reading, I tried to answer your email but my reply was returned. You may have mistyped your email address.
This old Montgomery Ward store was converted, years ago, into Montgomery Park and is now used as office space and convention center. When it was built, in 1920, it was the largest building in Portland.
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).
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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.
I’m happy to announce that I’ll be exhibiting work as part of a three person show at the AIA Center for Architecture next month. The show opens on Feb 7 with a First Thursday reception from 5PM – 9PM and continues through March 5th.
I’ll be showing with fellow Portland artists, Shawn Demarest and Beth Kerschen.
I’m particularly happy that I’ll be able to show my sketchbooks as well as paintings. I hope you’ll come by and see the show.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I’m still finding beauty in these unusual forms.
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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.
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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.
I visited the construction site of the new Portland Milwaukie bridge, which will be for light rail, cyclists and pedestrians.
Here’s a link to details about the bridge http://trimet.org/pm/construction/bridge.htm
They have very cool time lapse videos of the entire construction process at this link http://trimet.org/pm/construction/bridgecams.htm#
I’ve always been a seat of my pants kind of painter and enjoyed just starting in on a canvas without a plan and allowing the painting to become what ever it will. But, having struggled to complete two large paintings without a real plan, I’ve decided that it’s probably a good idea to do some studies before launching into a big project so that I know what I’m trying to accomplish. Maybe I’ll have a better idea of when I’m done, for one thing.
Here are a couple of studies I’m considering for a larger piece.
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I’m not sure exactly what year this is – late 60s early 70s Coupe Deville. This place needed some classin’ up and the Caddie fits the bill, don’t you think? It’s appropriately parked next to what I believe was once a gasoline pump.
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Local painter, Eduardo Fernandez, was kind enough to share a great painting site with me recently. We spent a beautiful Oregon summer day painting this amazing urban decay. A perfect day.
I hope to get a few more paintings out of this site.
Bill Sharp - paintings blog 