UPDATE: Isaka Shamsud-Din has died. “With deep sorrow, we share that our beloved elder and visionary artist, Isaka Shamsud-Din, has peacefully transitioned,” Teressa Raiford Mazique, founder of Don’t Shoot Portland, wrote late Monday, June 16, 2025. “He was surrounded by family and held in the thoughts and prayers of so many who cherished him.” Watch for a full memorial story on Shamsud-Din’s life and art later on ArtsWatch.

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A pivotal figure in Portland’s art world, Isaka Shamsud-Din, is in failing health. It is no secret to many of us that he has been fighting cancer for several years. He is now at his home resting and, according to friends and family, longing for his studio and plotting even more murals and portraits. The creative fight is still with him.

Shamsud-Din’s place in Portland’s visual field is as secure as the many concrete walls he has painted on. His works, especially his murals, are narrative adventures of the Black American experience. But however much his life was marked by that painful history, not a hint of bitterness shows in his art. He looks on his people’s experience and sees their determined survival. He sees joy in their everyday pastimes and pride in their creations.

Although the Black experience has always been foremost in his mind, the stories Shamsud-Din tells are the stories of us all. Family, work, loves, tragedies, hopes, fears, survival. He has taken us by the hand and shown us the path to find our own story within his story. And he has given us, irrespective of color, a route to discover our own challenges, losses, and triumphs. But mostly our joys. Send him a smile or a laugh, and he will know you have been on that voyage with him.

Isaka can be contacted at: Shamsuddinstudio@gmail.com

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