KPLU Local News
(2010-05-30)
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Woodside Braseth Gallery
Paul Horiuchi, "City", 1963, collage on canvas over board, 72" x 79"
Next time you swear at the clouds and the rain and the lack of sun, think of this. The gray that is the quintessential Northwest sky has had a lot to do with some great works of art being created here.
The Northwest School of Painters
John Braseth owns Seattle's oldest art gallery. Located downtown, Woodside Braseth opened in 1961. On one wall is a stunning, 8 foot high abstract painting. Braseth describes it as a cataclysm of things coming together like rock and water.
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| Gallery owner John Braseth in front of a Kenneth Callahan paintingPhoto courtesy of Woodside Braseth Gallery |
The work is by late Seattle artist Paul Horiuchi, who was a personal friend of Braseth.
"He used to say, John, I'm not trying to re-create nature. I'm interested in capturing the essence of nature.'"
Horiuchi is, like many artists whose work is displayed here, part of what is loosely referred to as the Northwest School of Painters. The artists did much of their work in the 1940's and 50's. What ties them together, Braseth and others believe, is the way they reflected their surroundings--muted tones and diffused light.
Iridescent Light
Braseth walks to a painting of a marsh by the late Morris Graves, one of the best known of the Northwest artists.
"There's absolutely no color in this painting, except these golden brown and maybe dark brown colors," he points out.
But what you see within the damp reeds is a subtle glow that is a signature of Grave's work. I comment that it practically glistens. He agrees, then pauses, at a loss for words. Finally, he says, "I think you have to live here to understand the beauty of this painting, don't you?"
Other big names in the Northwest School are represented here as well. There's a brooding seascape by Kenneth Callahan and a Mark Tobey work of the Pike Place Market in the rain, all muted reds and grays. Braseth says, "The people look as if they're soaked, don't they?"
We stand in front of another study in browns, this one by the late Guy Anderson. Braseth says Anderson hated summer, all that brightness and color. He lived in the Skagit Valley and loved November to February, a time of year that Braseth acknowledges isn't everyone's favorite time of year.
"It's not only cold, but the clouds literally sit in the valley on the ground," Braseth says.
I ask Braseth if he has people come into the gallery who find the work a little depressing. He laughs and says, "It does happen. I'm not going to lie."
Don't get the wrong idea. There are plenty of collectors and others, who are crazy about the Northwest School of painters. Braseth says they tend to be people who appreciate the climate here that can go from gray in the morning to a lighter shade of gray by noon to a bit of blue by evening.
"That iridescent light. That's what these artists are painting," Braseth says.
Light Continues to Inspire
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| Artist Anna Rhodes with her dog BrioPhoto courtesy of Nancy Medwell |
She describes the clouds. "There's a luminescent white, this shimmering pearlescent white," she says, adding that Leonardo da Vinci would have loved it.
Anna Rhodes is a painter. She's lived and worked in New York and Philadelphia, places that pulsated with history. She spent time on a Greek island with blue water and even bluer skies.
"And it was this powerful, blazing sun that would just pop out of the sky in the early morning and just drop like a glowing fireball into the sea," Rhodes says.
But she says something about the quality of light in Seattle so captivated her when she came here in 1986 that she never left.
The Hour of the Pearl
Rhodes says here in Seattle you have the "hour of the pearl," the light that appears right before sunset. Sometimes she'll pull her car over and get out just to look at it.
"There are times where I'm been sitting at a dinner party and I've asked if I can just excuse myself and I will go to a window and I will do a quick sketch," Rhodes says.
Rhodes puts on artist retreats, including one near Edmonds, Washington at the former estate of painter Morris Graves. She says she believes there was an almost spiritual quality to the light Graves and the other Northwest School painters captured.
"A sort of fading in and out quality, similar to a dream," Rhodes says.
Rhodes tries to reflect that quality in her paintings as well.
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| Nell's Squash |
But Anna Rhodes says when she travels to other places, she always gets the same question.
"How have you adapted to the weather in Seattle?"
To which she replies, "The weather in Seattle, oh the weather in Seattle is exquisite."
So here's some advice. Whenever the drizzle and the wet and the gloom and the gray has you down, stop, look up, and imagine what you could do with a paintbrush in your hand.
Northwest Painters at Woodside Braseth Gallery in Seattle
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