James Lavadour is one of the region's most prominent and respected artists. The past year has been highly productive and exciting for him. The paintings from this period have a fresh and immediate vigor; the landscape and abstract forms intersect. These paintings will be on view in concurrent shows at PDX and The Maryhill Museum of Art.
In an essay for the The Maryhill Museum of Art exhibition Terry Toedtemeier writes:
The paintings in this exhibition are both recent and new. Their "newness" comes, as Jim puts it, from being "in the here and right now." The process behind this recent work is not about remembering or thinking, but about acting in the moment, being aware and awake to the possibilities of seeing that lie along the perceptual edge -- the boundary of the unknown, a place of endless discoveries. For Lavadour, painting is the portal to this place. "It's not very far out there -- the unknown is a hair's width away."