James Lavadour has spent decades looking at the Umatilla Indian Reservation in northeastern Oregon: observing the sky and land, seeing direct evidence of the natural processes that have formed its geology over centuries.
The painter, a self-taught artist who was selected earlier this summer to create large-scale public artwork at Portland International Airport, works in landscapes that are not representational. He does not paint pictures — he paints what he calls “events,” layered figurative landscapes that evoke Oregonian geography without depicting it directly.
He treats the paint itself like it’s part of a geological process: letting it drip, wiping it away, layering it repeatedly. Those abstractions are displayed in architectural grids of different panels, making Lavadour’s work both organically free-flowing and within tight physical boundaries.
A retrospective of Lavadour’s decades of work, “Land of Origin,” is on display at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, on campus at the University of Oregon in Eugene. Lavadour and curator Danielle Knapp spoke about “Land of Origin” and how his work has changed with time…