The daily Astorian., June 09, 2016, Page 21, Image 32

JUNE 9, 2016 // 21
Cannon Beach Gallery opens ‘Landscape as Perception’
CANNON BEACH — The Can-
non Beach Arts Association
gallery will hold a reception
for its new show, “Landscape
as Perception,” from 6 to 8
p.m. Saturday, June 11.
An artist talk is planned
from 10:30 a.m. to noon June
18. “Landscape as Percep-
tion” is the Cannon Beach
Gallery’s contribution to the
Plein Air & More festival,
which takes place June 24, 25
and 26. The show runs June
11 to July 10.
The show is curated by
Janet Bland, a talented land-
scape artist in her own right.
She has selected the work
of three artists — Jef Gunn,
Joan Stuart Ross and Mi-
chael Southern — who each
approach the representation of
landscape in fresh and differ-
ent ways: in image as well as
medium and location.
“How we perceive is so
individual — we bring with it
all the emotions of the day,”
Bland said. “The same place
is never the same painting.
What artists do goes through
a ilter illed with emotion,
history, experience and even
the quality of their eyesight.
Everything will be different
tomorrow, and the artist is
‘recording/conveying’ how
it felt and looked today … at
this moment in their lives.
“My hope is the viewer,
will walk away from this ex-
hibit with an expanded view of
‘what is landscape,’ that your
ideas and perception have been
challenged and changed.”
Jef Gunn was born in
Seattle, and returned there
following his studies in draw-
ing and painting in California
through the 1970s and a
period living in Barcelona and
Paris in the 1980s. He now
lives in Portland. Gunn is a
passionate student of Asian
art, and his work draws on
multiple lineages of art, cul-
ture and spiritual legend. His
own family legend tells of his
maternal grandfather being
born under the loorboards
during an Indian raid in 1890s
Saskatchewan.
Gunn has taught painting
and drawing in Seattle since
the mid 1990s, has participat-
ed in multiple group exhibits
at the Art Gym, Marylhurst
University and Portland
Institute for Contemporary
Art, and had a solo show at
Oregon State University in
SUBMITTED PHOTO
“Far Shore II,” oil on panel by Jef Gunn.
1995. He was nominated for
the 2013 Northwest Artist
Awards, and is represented by
the William Traver Gallery in
Seattle, Cedar Street Galler-
ies in Honolulu, and Augen
Gallery in Portland.
Painter and printmaker
Mike Southern studied inta-
glio printmaking, making his
irst etching in 1988 at Am-
herst College in Massachu-
setts. He obtained a Master of
Fine Arts in printmaking from
the University of Georgia in
Athens in 1995. From 1995
to 2009 he lived and worked
in Portland before uprooting
and moving the wilds of New
Zealand, until returning to
Portland in 2012.
His landscape paintings
are imagined, representing no
particular area and are created
entirely in the studio. These
paintings have evolved over
the years as his research into
the techniques and materials
of the old masters continued.
“I see landscape as a
metaphor for an ideal place,”
Southern said. “Painting is the
physical act of constructing
my home; a place of refuge. I
want the art that I put into the
world to be reminiscent of a
better place and a more beau-
tiful place (like the distortion
of a dream or memory), but
not so deinable as to be
speciic or representative of a
real place.”
Joan Stuart Ross’s work
examines the spirit of phys-
SUBMITTED PHOTO
“Tiers” encaustic and mixed-media by Joan Stuart Ross.
ical, mental and emotional
places, their metaphysical
properties and mysteries, and
how we inhabit them. Her
non-linear narratives cele-
brate the transient nature of
light and how it can make the
opaque appear translucent.
“Some of my inspiration
draws from the Great Basin’s
windy ‘high lonesome,’ the
Northwest’s fog and mist,
the ecstatic race of surf and
spume and the subtext of
items from personal history,”
Ross said. “My work is ob-
sessive and repetitive. I layer,
carve, scrape, assess and
reassess. I combine painting
and the intaglio process in
layers of medium, embedded
collage, and incised expres-
sive lines illed with color.
Layers of visual information,
grids, tangents and trajectories
connect, cross and convene to
reveal what happens on and
underneath the surface.”
Ross is represented by
RiverSea Gallery in Astoria,
Ryan James Fine Arts in
Kirkland, Washington, and
WaterWorks Gallery in Friday
Harbor, Washington.
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