This exhibition of work by Margot Voorhies Thompson looks at the relationships between calligraphic forms and language.  Similar to nature, language has the ability to reinvent itself and adapt over time, or run to extinction.  Through adaptation, the meaning of our words change.  Thompson takes language and explores these changes by reinterpreting its meaning through form.  The words are undecipherable and her unique idiom expresses the lyrical form rather than the symbolism.  She deconstructs the alphabet literally by breaking up the letters into abstract elements.  The compositions become personal palimpsests that hide any literal meanings within.  This reinvention of letterforms and texts into graceful abstraction links her imagery to an archaic mysticism.  A Portland native, Margot Voorhies Thompson studied at Lewis and Clark College, Reed College, the Pacific Northwest College of Art, and at the Hocheschule Fur Kunsterlische in Linz, Austria.  Her work is in collections including the Portland Art Museum, the Stanford University Hospital, and the Printmaking Workshop in New York.  Margot Thompson has completed several collaborative book commissions with Kim Stafford, Pattian Rogers, and Wendell Berry for the University of Oregon’s Knight Library Press.  Other recent commissions include pieces for Oregon University of Health and Sciences, Portland; Portland State University; Kaiser Permanente, Tualatin, OR; the Woodstock Branch Multnomah County Library; and Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, both in Portland.

Margot Voorhies Thompson
Words in Motion 6 2008
mixed media on canvas
42" x 56"

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Cie Goulet's richly colored works are inspired by the dramatic light and energy found in landscapes of the Pacific Northwest and Northern California.  Although her images depict natural surroundings, they are not of specific places.  Rather, she captures the mood and beauty with her imagination through color and composition.  She paints directly onto a Plexiglas plate with a vigorous brush style.  From this, a one-of-a-kind print is pulled on a press.  Using vibrant oil-based litho inks, the artist continues to paint directly onto the surface of the print until the work is finished.  Photos of landscapes and her plein air experiences also influence the vivacious nature of her monotypes.  These awe-inspiring renditions of farmlands and hillside vistas, quiet groves and river views, reinterpret the landscape into beautiful expressions of mood and light.Goulet studied at the San Francisco Art Institute and graduated from the University of Oregon in the 1960s.  She went on to study at the Parson’s School of Design in New York in 1973 and continued to live there through the 1980s.  After settling in Oregon for some time, she eventually moved back to the Bay Area in the late 1990s.  Goulet’s work has been in numerous exhibitions on both the west and east coasts.  Her work is in private and public collections, including Kaiser Permanente, Portland and Seattle; Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA; Oregon Arts Commission, Salem; Oregon State University Valley Library, Corvallis; Portland Art Museum, OR; University of Oregon and Knight Library, Eugene; and Willamette University, Salem, OR.

Cie Goulet
Early Summer Morning (109) 2007
monotype
61" x 41"

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