Una Wilkinson
Born Una McCann in 1913 in Redwood City, CA, Wilkinson studied art at the California School of Fine Arts. She married fellow painter Jack Willkinson, who taught at the University of Oregon from 1941 to 1968. They went from Eugene to Louisiana, where her husband died in 1974, and she moved to Long Island and then to France, where she lives today.
In the 1930’s, Wilkinson became intrigued with the work of building the San Francisco Bay Bridge. She made her way past inspectors to complete hundreds of ink and watercolor sketches of the project. In 1986 , fifty of these pieces were exhibited at the Stanford University Museum of Art.
During her years in New York City, Wilkinson moved in social circles with artists like Jackson Pollock and Willem De Koonig. She assisted Diego Rivera with a mural.
Now 96, she still paints in her farmhouse in France. Arthur E. Baggs (1886 - 1947)
Baggs was graduated from the College of Ceramics at Alfred University in New York, where he studied with Charles Fergus Binns. He also studied at the Student’s Art League in New York City and at Harvard University.
In 1908 he organized the Marblehead Pottery as a handcraft program for the mentally ill; he served as its Director until 1915, when he became the owner.
From 1925 to 1928 he worked as associate ceramist at Cowan Pottery and taught at the Cleveland School of Art. In 1928 Baggs headed the Ceramic Art School at Ohio State University in Columbus, OH.
At the end of his life, Baggs taught in the School of Fine and Applied Arts at Oregon State University.
Guy Anderson (1906 - 1988)
Anderson was born in rural Washington. He was largely self-taught, aside from a brief period after high school with the Alaskan scenic painter Eustace Ziegler. From his childhood, he was captivated by Native American and Asian art, infulences which are notable in his work. In 1929, he was awarded a Tiffany Foundation scholarship, exposing him to Tiffany himself and to other artists of established reputation.
Anderson spent most of his life in the Northwest near Seattle, in the company of Graves, Tobey, and Callahan. In 1935, the Seattle Art Museum mounted a solo exhibition of his work. He found work with the WPA in the 1930s, and was sent to teach at the Spokane Art Center, which included on its faculty Carl Morris, Clyfford Still, and Hilda Grossman Morris.
Anderson worked primarily in oils, often including collaged found metal, and, in the 1960s, his work grew to enormous size--one piece measuring 7 X 13 feet.
Beatrice Wood (1893 - 1998)
Born in San Francisco to wealthy parents, Wood went to Paris to study art at the Academie Julian and acting at the Comedie-Francaise. WWI forced her return to the U.S. and she settled in New York, performing on the stage until she was in her 30s. She became acquainted with Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia, and others in the avant-garde movement, earning the designation “Mama of Dada.”
Wood moved to L.A., where she took a ceramics class and developed a passion which would last the rest of her life. She later studied with Glenn Lukens and Gertrud and Otto Natzler, who became her mentors. Her technique was unconventional, freely exploring form, glaze, and happenstance in the kiln.
By 1947, she was successful and her work represented in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She moved to Ojai, to the Happy Valley Foundation property. Wood continued to work in her studio until the age of 104. Carl Morris (1911 - 1993)
Carl Morris, regarded by some as Oregon’s most historically important painter, grew up in California and received his art education at the Art Institute in Chicago and in Paris and Vienna. After returning from Europe, he settled in San Francisco, teaching at the Art Institute.
In 1935, the Federal Art Project recruited him to found an arts center in Spokane, WA. Here he met the Northwest artists Graves, Anderson, Callahan, and Tobey. He later founded a similar center in Seattle, but in 1941 departed for Oregon, where he spent the rest of his life.
His early work is permeated with the color and landscape of Oregon; he was respected for his command of the figure, but later tired of the subject and moved toward abstraction. In 1957, a summer teaching position in Colorado drastically affected his work, bring a brilliance and expansiveness to his subject matter. During World War II, Morris was commisioned to paint murals for the Eugene Post Office, where they remain. Russell Chatham Russell Chatham was born in 1939 in San Francisco. He remained in the Bay area until moving to Park County, Montana in 1972. He is a self-taught artist. Chatham's primary medium is lithography. His work, largely northwest and Montana landscapes, has been exhibited in England, France, and Japan. Chatham's work is in numerous private collections. Brett Weston (1911 - 1993)
Brett Weston, born in Los Angeles, CA, was the son of the great photographer, Edward Weston. He began to photograph at the age of 12, in Mexico, where he lived with his father. By 14, he was creating the abstractions from the landscape which would characterize much of his early work. He and his father became photographic colleagues, traveling and working together; his father acknowledged an influence from his son on his own work.
By the age of 20, Brett Weston’s work was being exhibited internationally. His work spanned 60 years, moving from his technically precise, bold abstractions, to more classical European landscapes, to his final series of Hawaiian plant forms.
Weston challenged the boundaries of black and white photography through his experimentation with abstractions and recognizable objects. His work is in museums and collections throughout the world.
Charles Heaney (1897 - 1981)
Charles Heaney, born in Wisconsin, moved to Portland, OR, as a teenager. He was apprenticed to a jewelry engraver, which led to his art education at the Museum Art School. At first, his interest was in prints, woodcuts, and linoleum blocks; it was some years later that he turned to painting.
Heaney was influenced both personally and artistically by C.S. Price. He adopted Prices’s ideal of a simple life with complete dedication to his art.
Heaney traveled extensively, often taking photographs for later study. He loved eastern Oregon, where he found the geological formations, and the color, space, and textures of the desert an inspiration and challenge to him as a painter.
The Portland Art Museum honored Heaney in 1952 with a retrospective exhibit of his work.
Cecil G. Strawn
B.S., M.S., and M.F. A. degrees. Attended CA School of Fine Arts, San Jose State, and San Francisco State College (among others.)
Taught at University of Colorado, Central Washington College, Southern Illinois University, University of Wisconsin, and Northern Illinois University.
Work included in many national and regional exhibitions. Has won many awards. Regularly featured at America House in New York City. Included in traveling museum exhibits. Lance Wood Hart (1891 - 1941)
Lance Wood Hart was born in Aberdeen, WA, in 1891. Following his studies at the Art Institute of Chicago, and a tour of duty during World War I, he returned to Aberdeen to paint the landscape he loved. His work showed the influence of French impressionism and post-impressionism in his approach to color, concept, and design.
His artistic reputation well established in the Northwest, Hart became assistant professor of drawing and painting at the University of Oregon in 1931.
He exhibited regionally and nationally, experimenting with cubism and expressionism, while retaining his figurative base. He was a WPA artist and executed a mural at the Snohomish Washington Post Office.
Andrew Johnston
Originally from Washington, D.C., Johnston completed his MFA at the University of Oregon, where he studied with Frank Okada in the mid-70’s. He became quite well-known and admired in the local artists’ community, especially for his thoughtful and sensitive use of pastels. He was greatly inspired by the Oregon landscape, and his use of muted and well-considered colors capture the flavor unique to this area. Roger Saydack, collector and art lover, says of Johnson, “I don’t know of another Oregon artist who has used pastel in a more authentic way than Andy.”
A dedicated Tibetan Buddhist, Johnston left Eugene in the early 1990s to help build and decorate a temple near Mt. Shasta.
Martina Gangle Curl (1906 - 1994)
A muralist, painter, sketch artist, engraver, and block printer, Curl fused her prolific art with a life-long devotion to the cause of labor and social justice. Born outside Woodland, WA to a poor family, Curl attended a country grade school and worked with her mother as a fruit picker. Her formal education included four years at the Museum Art School in Portland where she was mentored by the artist Harry Wentz.
In the 1930s, she was hired through WPA to paint for the Timberline Lodge. She had a piece in the 1939 New York World’s Fair collection of American artists and her work was included in the 1939 and 1940 NW Printmakers Exhibition in Seattle.
To support herself, her son, and her mother, throughout her life she supplemented what she could earn through her artwork, by working in the orchards or doing domestic work. Martina Gangle Curl was a uniquely endowed class-conscious artist who portrayed the life and labor of working people with imagination, compassion, and wit. Her paintings, drawings and block prints were infused with a celebration of ordinary existence that nevertheless dramatized the social injustices she saw under capitalism.
Ellen Gabehart
Gabehart began her professional art training in New York City, where she attended the High School of Music and Art and the Student’s Art League. She received a B.A. degree from University of California in Northridge, majoring in Education and Fine Art.
After receiving a teaching credential, Gabehart taught painting and drawing in the Los Angeles public schools.
After moving to Oregon, Gabehart expanded her teaching to include adult education, offering classes and workshops through Lane Community College. Emerald Art Center, Willamalane Senior Center, and Maude Kerns Art Center.
Ellen Gabehart’s work has been heavily influenced by her travels in Mexico. She works primarily in watercolor to create narrative images with a subtle but colorful pallette.
Jack Wilkinson (1913 - 1974)
Born in Berkeley, CA, Jack Wilkinson completed undergraduate studies at University of Oregon before returning to study at the California School of Fine Arts. He studied with Leger and others in Paris.
In 1941, Wilkinson joined the faculty of the University of Oregon, establishing one of the first basic design courses in an American university. .
Wilkinson’s work was widely exhibited, including one-person shows at the CA School of Fine Arts, the Portland Art Museum, and the University of Oregon.
Stylistically he began with an analytical approach to landscape, but by the 1950s his work became more abstract and figurative. In the 1960s he returned to landscapes and studies of the nude figure.
In 1968 he moved to Louisiana to head the department of fine arts at Louisiana State University, which presented a retrospective of his work in January of 1975.
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