Current Exhibits   Previous Exhibits   Exhibit Schedule March 6 - 29, 2008 THE LAURA RUSSO GALLERY IS PLEASED TO PRESENT: GROUP EXHIBITION OF GALLERY ARTISTS OPENING RECEPTION: First Thursday March 6, 2008 First Thursday Hours, 5-8pm THE LAURA RUSSO GALLERY IS PLEASED TO PRESENT: Marlene Bauer - Premonitions, New Paintings Carl Morris - A Select Group of Works on Paper Arthur and Albert C. Runquist - Paintings on Paper Portland painter Marlene Bauer continues to explore a symbolic vocabulary of abstract images and color. This series, entitled Premonitions, is compositionally narrative, connecting personal memories to time and place. She interprets various memories of sites and sounds into visual poetry. Unlike her earlier urban-scapes, these recollections are of interiors and still life. Bauer's sensory awareness is heightened by synethesia; an innate ability to connect particular colors with particular sounds. Consequently, as the artist develops her compositions the subtlety of color is continually refined. The result is a wonderful blending of superb color with a more delicate and playful line. A Northwest native, Marlene Bauer received her BFA in 1976 from the Pacific Northwest College of Art. Since that time she has exhibited her work throughout the Northwest while teaching art at Marylhurst College. From 2002-05, she taught art at Clackamas Community College and became responsible for developing their Alexander Gallery. Her work is in private and public collections along the West coast including the Portland Art Museum, OHSU, Safeco Corp., and Seattle Arts Commission. In 2004, she completed a columnar commission in mosaic, Munnich for the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Marlene Bauer Library 2008 acrylic on canvas 47.25" x 33" More examples by Marlene Bauer Well-known artist, Carl Morris (1911-1993) created luminous and affecting works inspired by the natural beauty of the Northwest landscape. For this exhibition, we will present a special selection of works on paper dating from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. These paintings, primarily sumi and tempera on rice paper, include work from series entitled, Shore and River and Inscription. Some of these works show the figure within environmental constructs not unlike the penetrating subject matter of Morris' 1959 commission for the Oregon Centennial, History of Religions, recently shown at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, U of O. The works in this exhibition contrast with that commission in their diminutive scale and mysteriousness made darker by the sumi medium. Although Carl Morris began his education in California, his studied in Chicago, Vienna, and Paris. He was an original, first-generation abstract painter linked to the New York School of the 1950s exhibiting at the Kraushaar Galleries in New York. He had a lifelong friendship with Mark Rothko even though Carl and his wife, Hilda settled in Portland in 1941. They became significant artists grouped with the Northwest Mystics School along with Mark Tobey, Morris Graves and Kenneth Callahan. Carl has been recognized by museums across the country and his work has been reviewed and profiled extensively in numerous publications. His paintings have been exhibited internationally and are included in public and private collections around the world. Morris died in 1993, the same year the Portland Art Museum honored him with a retrospective. Carl Morris Figure Group #6 c.1970 sumi and acrylic on paper 21" x 17.5" More examples by Carl Morris This exhibition will feature a selection of paintings on paper from the estates of Arthur and Albert C. Runquist Brothers born in South Bend, Washington in the 1890s, they spent much of their lives chronicling the people and landscapes of the Oregon coast. Their work reveals an intimate familiarity with the people and places they painted, providing unique insights into the roots of regional painting in the Northwest. Their imagery ranges from laboring and domestic life and simple landscape studies to more abstracted examinations of the natural world. The Runquist brothers, born three years apart, attended the University of Oregon, and spent time at the Art Students' League in New York during the 1920s. During the depression, each artist painted W.P.A. murals at sites including a Washington State Post Office and the University of Oregon Library. For nearly two decades, they lived and painted on the Oregon Coast at Neakahnie. Arthur and Albert shared a uniquely similar style in their work. On occasion, it is believed that they even contributed to one another's canvases. Both were actively painting shortly before their deaths, which occurred only months apart in 1971. Albert C. Runquist Untitled O-237 (steamboat, dredge) oil on paper 19.5" x 24.5" More examples by Albert C. Runquist Arthur Runquist Untitled F-152 (figurative stump, blue sky) gouache on paper 26.5" x 23" More examples by Arthur Runquist