Visual Arts

Our visual arts coverage is made possible in part by support from The Ford Family Foundation’s Visual Arts Program.

Dinh Q. Lê at Elizabeth Leach Gallery

Lê died unexpectedly at age 56 in 2023. The survey at the artist's long-time Portland gallery includes the artist's well-known photo-weavings along with sculptural and photographic work.

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High Desert Museum Frank Matsura Portraits from the borderland Bend Oregon

Rick Bartow Art Studio finds a new home at Yakona Nature Preserve & Learning Center

April 17, 2025Lori Tobias

The tiny building when the beloved Newport artist worked will be reconstructed at the preserve, giving the arts program the home base it has lacked.

‘Hands of the Ancestors’: Kalapuya artist Stephanie Craig’s mix of past and present

April 15, 2025Dee Moore

Craig's woven basketry at the Linfield Art Gallery rekindles a fading heritage, blending contemporary methods with the traditions and meanings of ancestral ways.

Artistic wellspring: Trio of exhibits celebrates Arlene Schnitzer’s contributions

April 14, 2025Justin Duyao

Three exhibitions, two at the Oregon Historical Society and one at the Schnitzer Collection, explore the ways Arlene Schnitzer and her Fountain Gallery have shaped Oregon's artistic landscape. The last installment of 'A Fountain of Creativity: Oregon's 20th Century Artists and the Legacy of Arlene Schnitzer' closes May 4th.

Donna Guardino, gallery owner and a force behind the Alberta Arts District, dies at age 81

April 11, 2025Beth Sorensen

A longtime icon in the Portland arts community, Guardino was known for championing the careers of new artists.

Steve Ehret: Here there be humors

April 7, 2025Patrick Collier

Ehret's monster-filled compositions both represent demons and exorcise them. Patrick Collier reviews "Resting my Bones" at The Art Center in Corvallis.

Introducing the ‘Not on View’ project

April 6, 2025Laurel Reed Pavic

Storage is often a repository for items that institutions or individuals would rather ignore. What can we learn about what we'd rather hide away?

Two Spirit and Third Gender: More than entertainment

April 4, 2025Dee Moore

An exhibit and performances in Monmouth are both drag show and protests in favor of Indigenous Queer acceptance and against the effects of climate change.

VizArts Monthly: Community

April 1, 2025Raylee Heiden

Weather in April weather may be a gamble but art exhibits are a sure bet. Here is a selected smattering of the month's art exhibits featuring everything from crackers to the apocalypse.

Water, smoke, and words: Patricia Vázquez Gómez’s ode to indigenous language

April 1, 2025Lucy Cotter

The Portland-based artist's immersive installation at Portland Institute of Contemporary art brings questions about the resilience of indigenous immigrant languages to the fore.

At the Japanese Garden, a world of contrasts and co-mingling

April 1, 2025Friderike Heuer

As visitors view the blooms of early spring, the garden unveils other forms of beauty: a wealth of ceramic and stenciled art echoing and expanding on the natural world.

Crossed wires at Mockingbird Gallery

March 30, 2025Catherine Snyder

A serendipitous meeting at the Bend gallery results in painter Richard Boyer's "Market Street" selling to the Market Street project's superintendent and field engineer.

MECCA used art supply store in Eugene encourages creativity through recycling

March 30, 2025Ester Barkai

The nonprofit Materials Exchange Center for Community Arts, which offers workshops and provides free supplies to teachers, is a cross between a garage sale and an arts-and-crafts thrift shop.

Demons and twigs: The healing art of Debbie Baxter

March 27, 2025David Slader

The art of reclamation: A photographer builds nests of safety and solace. People who've been abused climb in, confront their demons, and emerge healthier and happier.

Crystal Meneses: Raising ‘A Thousand Hands’ for art as spiritual healing

March 24, 2025Lori Tobias

The Lincoln City artist honors her Pacific Islander heritage and relationship with Kuan Yin in an exhibit opening April 4 in Newport.

Former Major League Baseball player Dave Baldwin of Yachats has gone from pitching to poetry, and now, big bold paintings

March 21, 2025YachatsNews.com

The retiree, whose resume also includes work as a geneticist and engineer, is one of three artists in a new venture: Little Art Museums of Yachats.

Portland Art Museum sets the date: After 9 years, transformed campus to open Nov. 20

March 20, 2025Bob Hicks

The museum will unveil its $111 million renovation and its new Rothko Pavilion with a four-day free celebration and a rethinking of how it displays its art.

For three decades, Newport Paper & Book Arts Festival has been doing things by the book

March 18, 2025Lori Tobias

The three-day festival in April offers 10 workshops on a range of paper arts — and the opportunity for bookmaking friends to reconnect.

‘Seeking Warmth’: A Romani artist who survived the Holocaust paints memories gentle and harsh

March 17, 2025Friderike Heuer

At Art at the Cave gallery in Vancouver, Wash., the work of Ceija Stoika is haunted by harsh realities: "I fear that Europe is forgetting its past and that Auschwitz is only asleep."

Susan Seubert’s ‘Fragile Beauty’: Icebergs and the passage of time

March 15, 2025Brian Libby

The Portland photographer has led a dual career, traveling the world as a photojournalist and showing fine art in museums and galleries. At PDX Contemporary Art, her new iceberg show brings the two together.

April Waters’ ‘Sheroes,’ big and bold

March 13, 2025Dee Moore

The Salem artist's giant portraits of activist women including Dr. Helen Caldicott and water rights advocate Maud Barlow stare forthrightly out of their frames.

Artist Travis Johnson brings ‘Toxic Gods & Black Fairy Tales’ to Linfield University

March 6, 2025David Bates

Johnson's paintings resonate with images whose sources are as diverse as the Middle Passage and childhood memories of rabbits.

Phyllis Trowbridge: Meditating on place

March 5, 2025Prudence Roberts

Trowbridge's show 'Painting in Time' at the North View Gallery on the campus of PCC Sylvania is a celebration of place and testament to the benefits of close observation.

VizArts Monthly: Weaving into March

March 4, 2025Raylee Heiden

As we move into early spring, multiple art exhibitions touch on the idea of weaving and combining different elements together.

Poetry from the people: Street Roots vendors create rhyme and reason

March 2, 2025Elizabeth Mehren

Street poets gather weekly at the "School in the Sky" to study poetry and create their own, some of which is on display in a words-and-art exhibit at Central Library.

Just Playin’ Around: Seriously? Of course.

February 22, 2025Friderike Heuer

A new exhibit at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at PSU explores the links between exploring childlike creativity and engaging the larger worlds of culture and the mind.

Derek Franklin’s dusky time of evening

February 19, 2025David Slader

Whenever real and unreal shadow each other: Contemplating the artist's exhibit "Between the Time of the Dog and the Wolf" at Portland's Elizabeth Leach Gallery.

Michael Brophy’s latest paintings engage with the Hanford Nuclear Site in eastern Washington

February 18, 2025Kyera Lutton

The artist's 'Reach' series on view at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Eugene comments on industrialism, environmental impact, and nuclear war.

Chehalem Cultural Center goes for ‘A Walk in the Woods’

February 16, 2025David Bates

The show, at the Newberg center through March 13, features tree-themed art by Tabby Ivy, Rebecca Kiser, Elena and Trifon Markova, Karin Carter, and Linda Workman-Morelli.

Portraits by Jeremy Okai Davis add new faces to Oregon history

February 12, 2025Laurel Reed Pavic

Commissioned as part of a "reimagining" process at the historic Bush House in Salem, the newly completed set of portraits of Oregon's Black ancestors offers new stories to celebrate and reflect upon.