David McCosh and the Promise of Oregon January 2005
“IT WAS 50 YEARS AGO this summer that I had my
Many of us who came here from “back east” never
first sight and taste of the Far West, most notably
get over our first sight of Oregon. It may be the sky,
Oregon. I was hooked for life. . . .
so enormous and different from what we knew, the
“Sadly deprived is the American youth who never
peculiar sharp angle the light can have this far north,
has known the wonder and delight of a first crossing
or any of a thousand sights and experiences that we
by land of half the continent, better yet, the whole
had only imagined before. We discover all of it in a
of it. From six miles up one does see, to be sure,
great rush of excitement, and, like Charles Duncan,
weather and seat position permitting—something of
we revel ever after in the memory of those first
the immense stretch of plain far below and, soon, of
days. David McCosh, who was from Iowa by way of
the jagged, menacing Rockies, but there is no sense of
Chicago, discovered this country gradually, closely,
touch, of personal, physical involvement. . . .
and intimately enough to paint it. Throughout all of
“In the summer of 1939 . . . on (a) glorious two
his years here, no matter where else he traveled and
week trip (out west) in a friend’s road-weary DeSoto
without regard to the changing fashions of the art
sedan . . . every mile . . . was terra incognito.
world, he painted the Oregon landscape. This land-
“The thrill of discovery is not reserved alone for the Columbuses, the Lewis & Clarks, the Amund-
scape, returned to repeatedly, was the steady heartbeat that gave life to his art.
sens of the world, those who first set eye or foot upon
If you are mostly familiar with David McCosh’s later
the Unknown. No matter that thousands of people,
paintings, the patches of color and calligraphic lines
millions, even, had already seen the Badlands, the
that create dense tangles—not unlike the underbrush
Black Hills, the Big Horns, Yellowstone Park . . . Mount
we have in these parts—you may think of him as an
Hood, the Columbia Gorge, Portland—no matter, I
abstract painter. He didn’t think of himself that way at
hadn’t seen them.
all. His painting was almost always based on his careful
“All was new, wonderful, exciting. No ‘peak in
observation of some specific situation, as he would say,
Darien’ was the nameless spot from which I first looked
in the world around him. He said that when he painted
out over the endless sweep of the Pacific Ocean, but
something—a fir tree, for example—he worked to elimi-
Vasco Nuñez de Balboa could not have been more awed
nate the usual, the ordinary, so he could focus instead on
on that historic September day in 1513.”
what is most extraordinary about that tree. The pieces in this show are especially vivid instances of McCosh painting what is extraordinary, with the fresh vision and
From “One Trip West, Hooked for Life,” by Charles Duncan (August 4, 1989). Reprinted in An Orange for Christmas and Other Reflections (Guard Publishing Company, 1993).
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thrill of discovery that characterizes his best work. The show includes paintings from McCosh’s first days in Oregon—when everything was new and
