(Above: The Deadly Quick Touch, part of the Film Noir Series, one piece in a show of work by the late Oregon artist Tom Blodgett at the Karin Clarke Gallery)
If you’re still trying to get into the mood for Halloween, the Karin Clarke Gallery has a show of appropriately surreal — sometimes eerie, sometimes even a bit scary — drawings and paintings by the late Oregon artist Tom Blodgett, who died in 2012 at age 72.
4 Crows w/Trees, by Tom Blodgett
This is the first major exhibit of Blodgett’s work in three decades, and it has been curated by a fellow artist, Craig Spilman, who chose 24 of the works to put on the walls of the downtown gallery through Oct. 31.
Not everything in the show is macabre, of course, but a good deal of it tends toward the dark side. A notable exception is a pastel called 4 Crows w/Trees, rendered in soothingly springlike shades of green, blue, and ochre.
On the other hand, there is Event on a Hot Summer Day, 1871, with Ghosts, completely perfect for this season.
Blodgett’s Hot Summer Day, 1871, with Ghosts
Maybe nothing describes Blodgett better than an introduction to his work that appeared in Discoveries in American Art:
“Rare is the artist who could claim to have dived as deep into the unconscious and survived the journey — bringing back images of intense imagination and technical brilliance. As proof, this recluse kept his life’s works buried in a dilapidated shack in the hills of Eugene, Oregon. The revelation of this extraordinary collection shines light on a master whose life and works, once reassessed, open a new approach for discourse about the purpose of art itself. Tom Blodgett did more than fulfill his claim that he was ‘the van Gogh in America.’ “
The piece goes on to describe the childhood terror and abuse that gave rise to the darkness in Blodgett’s work, as well as the coping and healing atmosphere he created for himself in the remote solitude of his cabin in the woods, where he communed with the plants and animals that surrounded him.
All of it combined to create the extensive body of delicately drawn, surrealistic art that he left behind, as characterized in the current show, Faces, Figures, and Phantoms — A Partial Self-Portrait.
Born in Oregon City, Blodgett received an undergraduate degree in art at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, and followed it in 1966 with a master of fine arts at the University of Oregon. He taught a variety of art and design courses at Lane Community College during his career, as well as at the UO, Oregon State University, Portland’s Museum of Art School, and the Maude Kerns Art Center in Eugene.
Faces, Figures, and Phantoms — A Partial Self-Portrait
Michelle at 20, by Tom Blodgett
