When I met artist Ed Cameron shortly after landing in Newport in the early 2000s, he was already at an age when many others slow down, becoming more inclined to observe life than fully engage. But not Cameron. On any given night, he could be found jamming on his harmonica with local musicians or playing a role in a theater production or leading any number of festivities, such as the Nye Beach Bloomsday celebration he founded. If it involved the arts and Newport, Cameron was there.

Then, in 2011, as he marked 80 years on the planet, he published his first book, Gilmore by the Sea.  Equal parts graphic novel and short story collection, the book chronicles the days when Cameron was one of a bunch of “artists, alcoholics and post-flower children” living in the Hotel Gilmore – once described in bathroom graffiti as “the only flophouse with an ocean view and a waiting list,” and later to gain fame as the Sylvia Beach Hotel.

Now 93, Cameron is readying for the spotlight again, this time with his first solo art exhibit, The Moment, opening Oct. 5 at the Yaquina River Museum of Art in Toledo. Cameron will make a presentation at 1:30 p.m. that day, and his original paintings, prints, and books will be available for sale. The show runs through Nov. 24.

I visited Cameron at his home in a 55+ community just a few blocks from both the former Gilmore Hotel and the Nye Beach cottage he called home for nearly 40 years, before it was razed to make way for a new development. While he and daughter, Marcel, prepared for the coming exhibit, we talked about art, inspiration, and the deception of simplicity. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Where does your life as an artist begin?

Cameron: Actually, it was in my childhood. I was drawing all the time in class and getting my fingers smacked with a ruler.  The only thing I was interested in was drawing, and for the most part, it was comic strips that were inspiring me.

Do you remember which comic strips?

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Terry and the Pirates. As matter of fact, I have a couple of signed artworks of his. I was a fan, and I wrote and got what I suspect all his fans got, which were drawings of two or three of his characters. All I would read were comic books, and my education was that narrow, but I just kept drawing all my life.

You graduated from Portland State University, married, had kids, divorced, and taught high school, then headed to San Francisco, where you became part of the underground cartoon culture. From there, it was onto L.A., where you delivered pizza and studied acting before deciding you didn’t want to die in California and landed in Newport. How did your art evolve over time?

I was creating my own comic strip characters in elementary school, and so I was inside that world until, I would say, middle/high school, when I started drawing what was around me, especially the girls around school. The same in college. I was drawing what was happening around me. I was editor of the school newspaper and later placing my own cartoons in the college paper. I just kept drawing all my life. If it wasn’t for drawing, I might have gotten an education. Ultimately, when I found myself on Facebook after a while, I started drawing upon all of these sketchbooks that I had and just adding watercolor and dressing them up.  

Your drawings often appear quite simple and yet, with very little detail, you manage to convey so much. How do you do that?

It is brushwork and there’s only so much detail you can do with the brush. I mean, you want to capture the stroke itself. That’s part of the picture, how that brushstroke works around a corner, and it also forces it to be more simple. I think what we’re talking about is, I work with a simple drawing quite simply because I don’t have enough time for the brush.

What is it about a subject that makes you say, I’m going to draw that?

As an example, I was leaving the library, and there was a young woman who was stretched out on a long chair, reading a book. It was just such a touching image of library life, for one thing, and the comfort with which that woman could feel to lay herself out and read and not be noticed. Her spirit, her liberty … right in front of everybody in the library, she is lying on her belly and reading a book, and I thought, there’s something about that that is totally novel. I walked by and went straight to the car to my sketchbook and sketched her. So, I suppose that I respond to what I call the novel, not necessarily what surprises me, but intrigues me. The broad answer is anything that strikes me as unique and that I want to see caught.

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Do people know when they are going to be subjects of our work? Do you ask permission?

No. Usually, frequently, you don’t see their face, because I’m drawing them from behind or off at another angle. Even that is just a rough sketch. I mean, I do it quickly, only because what I’m looking at changes immediately. As an example, I’ve got one in the collection which is a little girl, I would say 4 years old, and she is sort of stooped, sitting on her heels, and her dog is beside her, and they’re both looking away from me. I was directly behind when I saw them. I called that one Moment, because that was the moment, and it would be gone immediately.

How did this exhibit come about?

It started, as with everything, with the Gilmore. Judy Gibbons [board chair of the Yaquina River museum] was hosting a show for a painting of the Gilmore Hotel by Jack Wenstrom. She asked me to make a presentation about both the painting and the hotel. That went so well that she suggested that maybe I might want a show of my own. I agreed immediately, and so we started gathering up the body of the work, and it’s flowered since.