About the Artists:
Pam Greene:
My daily life looks west to the Pacific. The background roar is a soundtrack of increasing and decreasing volume in step with the magnitude of tidal force. These paintings hold within them my experiences as an artist on the edge of the ocean.
The arrival and retreat of the sea is as predictable as clockwork, and yet unknowable in final form. The hypnotic shoreward surge rearranges itself into sets, no two ever the same.
There are days with green and blue waves, (more than a few) gray days, aqua and mint days, and precious, spectacular days of turquoise, emerald, sapphire and gold. There are days when the depths are concealed by reflections of the sky above, and days of transparency.
The waves leave behind a sculpted landscape of quiet pools, windows into the world of mysterious life below.
Each day the shoreline is restored, and for those who love the ocean, we are restored as well.
With an MFA in art and design from Stanford, and an undergraduate degree in botany, I am a perpetual observer of nature’s inspiring forms. I learned to paint in oils in the early 70’s, and have been painting ever since. In 1988 I moved to Oregon, where my visual perceptions were further shaped by a 30-year career of shoe design and innovation at Nike. I’ve been painting Central Oregon and the Oregon Coast professionally since 1994.
As an innovator, I approach each painting as something of an experiment. I like to be surprised as the composition emerges, and create balance with distilled, delineated shapes using brushstrokes aiming to capture nature’s spontaneity. The resulting pieces have a graphic quality with influences from my many years of travel to East Asia, and study of East Asian art.
My work is represented in private collections nationally and internationally, and available through the Portland Art Museum’s Rental Sales gallery. rentalsalesgallery.com/
MJ Anderson:
I create sculpture in collaboration with marble, carving a material that once was alive under the sea. Ancient coral reefs and bones from ocean creatures accumulated over millennia on the bottom of changing seas. With geologic shifts and the weight of time, these deposits were highly compressed under extreme heat and pressure and thrust upwards into marble mountains. The quarrying process cuts open these mountains to expose the history of our planet. My marble is from Carrara, Italy – where I have worked for 40 years, bringing sculptures to fruition in my studios both in Carrara and on the Oregon Coast.
