David McCosh and the Oregon School of Landscape Painting Schrager & Clarke Gallery, April 2014

David McCosh and the Oregon School of Landscape Painting

April 2014

LET’S START with the title of the show. I admit that it’s intentionally provocative. The Oregon School of Landscape Painting has no walls, no leader; it has rules, but they often get bent a bit. I see it as a group of like-minded painters who have found inspiration and source material in the Oregon landscape, and who, most importantly, share some beliefs and values about painting as an art form despite their very evident differences in styles, approaches, and attitudes (yes, attitudes). It’s a school in the sense of the Hudson River School or the New York School of Abstract Expressionism. David McCosh was a member of the school, not the leader or the dean— but a member. Each of the painters in this show, in one way or another, has a relationship to McCosh, his methods and his approach to painting, just as his work has a relationship to theirs. I see all of them as peers, not disciples or students—but fellow travelers.

The idea behind the show was for me to select a small group of McCosh’s Oregon landscapes and then invite six other painters who share some common ground with McCosh to each select three of their works to be shown with the McCosh pieces. Hanging all of the work together gives viewers the opportunity to experience seven different approaches to the Oregon landscape by painters who in spite of their differences have quite a bit in common.

The McCosh works I selected are predominately from the 1950s and 1960s, which, I think, is his great and most distinctive period. Five were done at the Coast, two in Central Oregon, and seven are from the forests around the McKenzie River and Horse Creek. They represent his various approaches to the landscape and his characteristic palettes during these years. I selected works that are examples of McCosh’s most inventive and creative responses to the various landscapes of Oregon to see if they might inspire the other painters to submit some of their most inventive and creative work.

There are no rules that I asked the other painters to follow in selecting their pieces, other than that they should be Oregon landscapes. I invited each painter to write a statement about his or her work, its relationship to McCosh, to the Oregon landscape, or whatever they would like to discuss, to be posted on the wall with their work. And we’ve scheduled informal gallery talks during the show by the painters, which will give each the opportunity to discuss their work and help us understand what it is that ties all of the painters in this show together.

When I think about what McCosh and the other painters in the show have in common, I’m reminded about some of the things that Paul Cézanne said about painting when he talked with friends who came to visit him late in his life. One time, he described for a writer friend what he called his personal way of seeing the landscape. He said that when he looked at a tree as a distant and remote object, he became very aware of the space between him and the tree. So he painted the tree descriptively and objectively as a separate object. But at other times, he saw the tree with all of his senses as a tangible object that was enlivened by its colors, its smell, its tactile qualities, the light and atmosphere of the forest, and his painting became an attempt to realize his sensations—and place the tree

Forested Retreat, n.d. Watercolor on paper, 153/8 x 213/4 inches McCosh Memorial Collection; MMC.1022

into the harmony he saw in nature. His belief was that if his painting wove the components of the landscape together into a mosaic with its colors blending gently into one another, he would make the sensuous experience of the landscape palpable for us. He said that he wanted his painting to join nature’s hands and parallel nature’s unity. “The landscape thinks itself in me,” he said. “Let the scene be born, let it germinate in you,” was his advice to other painters.

This painterly, sensuous response to the landscape that strives for harmony is at the heart of David McCosh’s lyrical, lively painting. Cézanne’s response is also very close to Craig Cheshire’s beautifully ordered and realized works that invite the eye to move slowly and linger long. Mark Clarke’s work reaches so deeply into the essence of his landscape situations that we see what Cézanne meant by the landscape “thinking itself” inside the painter. The vibrant work of Margaret Coe creates a sensuous experience of the landscape that is rich and palpable. Jon Jay Cruson parallels nature’s unity in the quiet elegance of his lithograph and the bold, interlocking colors and the dancelike lines and shifting spaces of his paintings. Bets Cole brings the ambient light of the landscape into her work with a sure sense of tone that gives us the feel of the air. And then there’s Nelson Sandgren, the courageous, imaginative Romantic who paints directly from his heart. Nelson’s paintings are like dreams of what a painting might be.

We are so fortunate to have these painters to help us realize the beauty of the landscapes of Oregon and all that we can experience in them.

My thanks to each of our painters—Craig, Mark, Margaret, Bets, Jon Jay, and Erik, for his father, Nelson—for rising to the not-so-gentle challenge I placed in front of them to submit work that would best help us understand the purpose and the importance of landscape painting in Oregon.

My hope is that this show will open up a conversation among these painters, and among you, their viewers, from which we all will learn. Once again, David McCosh is a teacher.

Fallen Log at Horse Creek, n.d. Watercolor on paper, 151/8 x 221/8 inches McCosh Memorial Collection; MMC.0887

Left Forest Pool, n.d. Watercolor on paper, 151/8 x 221/2 inches McCosh Memorial Collection; MMC.0946

FPO

Horse Creek in the Spring, n.d. Oil on linen, 233/4 x 347/8 inches McCosh Memorial Collection; MMC.0161

Left Dune Edge, 1966 Ink on paper, 151/4 x 22 inches Private Collection

Horse Creek Boulder, n.d. Watercolor on paper, 203/8 x 293/4 inches McCosh Memorial Collection; MMC.1746

Nelson Sandgren (1917–2006)

Parkside Gardener

Oil on panel, 36 x 48 inches Nelson Sandgren Estate

Craig Cheshire (American, born 1936) Rocky Shore at Yachats, 2009 Oil on linen, 24 x 36 inches Courtesy the artist

Jon Jay Cruson (American, born 1942) Night Grass, mid-1980s Acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 inches Courtesy the artist

Bets Cole (American, born 1951) Clear Sea, 2004 or 2007 Acrylic on paper, 19 x 28 inches Private collection

Mark Clarke (American, 1935–2016) Near Cummins Creek, n.d. Acrylic on canvas, 24 x 30 inches Courtesy the artist’s estate

Margaret Coe (American, born 1941) Yaquina #5, 2014 Oil on board, 18 x 36 inches Courtesy of the artist