(Above: Eugene artist Tallmadge Doyle’s latest project, Celestial Oceans, grew out of seeing and reinterpreting astronomical views of deep space.)

By Randi Bjornstad

Artist Tallmadge Doyle’s new show at the Karin Clarke Gallery, titled Celestial Oceans, is work that she’s never shown before. Three years in the making — the exploration began during the pandemic — it grew organically out of another series of her works, a combination of drawing and painting called Underwater Garden.

In fact, Doyle considers the two extremes — deep water and deep space — to be intrinsically and artistically related.

The idea began years ago when she began reading about a phenomenon called The Blob, “a mass of warm water off the coast of Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon that really disrupts marine life,” she recalls. “Those warm water streams are full of microscopic organisms such as plankton that really change the character and the health of the oceans.”

At the same time, the appearance of those microscopic animals and plans offer a source of delight and inspiration to artists such as Doyle, who began interpreting their intricate compositions and colors in artwork that combined drawing and painting.

Then, while attending a PLAYA artist’s residency at Summer Lake at the edge of Oregon’s Great Basin, she came upon a revelation that both expanded and united her past and present projects.

In fact, much of Doyle’s artwork for years had been related, in one way or another, to her observations of — and deep concern about — climate change. But one night at PLAYA, the artists-in-residence participated in a Dark Sky Night, “with all kinds of telescopes and poetry,” she recalls, “and I realized that visually, a lot of the forms seen in deep space seemed so similar to the ones I’d seen in deep ocean. So I started making that connection and and combining those ideas and images.”

This exhibit, Celestial Oceans, grew out of that convergence.

The series “considers intricate systems of microscopic ocean life forms simultaneously with the expansive telescopic realm of our solar system’s star formations,” Doyle writes in her artist’s statement. “These natural realities, dissimilar in scope yet at times indistinguishable in form, overlap and intertwine in my imagination offering boundless creative potential.”

She relishes the realization as creating “a playground for new realities too energetic to be positioned in any one place, where color is ethereal, vivid, and brilliant and where light is unpredictable and form vibrates, allowing access into the immensity of the unexplored abundance and to imagine what is often unseen by human eyes.”

The works in this display represent “a cross between drawing and painting” that includes mediums such as India ink and pigment pencil on paper, panel, and other surfaces.

“I start with a vague idea, and everything grows out of that,” Doyle says. “I sketch with pencil and India ink — I work on a lot of things at once, as many as 20 — and then I go back and see what it needs. Maybe it comes out through printmaking, maybe it’s more pure painting, or using very thin paper as collage.”

From one inspiration to the next, her process “keeps on evolving,” she says with a laugh.

Doyle highly recommends participation in artistic residencies, which often, as in her recent PLAYA experience, help both to focus and expand artistic expression.

“I send things off to apply for residencies all the time — sometimes I get them and often I don’t, because I only apply for the ones that are fully funded,” she says. “But I remember an instructor at the University of Oregon who said to keep every single rejection you get — that’s how you know you are doing enough.”

Celestial Oceans at the Karin Clarke Gallery

When: Through Nov. 25, 2023

Where: Karin Clarke Gallery, 760 Willamette St., Eugene

Hours: Noon to 5:30 p.m. Wednesday through Friday; 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday

Special events: Opening reception: 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 20, with talk by the artist at 6 p.m.; also open 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 3, during the downtown Eugene First Friday ArtWalk

Information: 541-684-7963, karinclarkegalleries@gmail.com or online at karinclarkegallery.com

Artist Tallmadge Doyle sits in her home studio. Her latest show, “Celestial Oceans,” is at the Karin Clarke Gallery in downtown Eugene; photo by Randi Bjornstad