This June, we are pleased to share the work of Jon Jay Cruson and Sara Swink.

Having established his career in the 1970’s as a lithographer, Jon Jay Cruson shifted to canvas mid-career and has never looked back. His stylized shapes, patterns and colors, are the result of much time spent studying the Pacific Northwestern landscape. While remaining representational, his paintings tend toward the abstract, a double pull that is one source of the creative tension in his work. Planes and perspectives shift in impossible ways while color and patterns add an alluring layer of complexity. His work is included in countless permanent collections including Portland Art Museum, University of Oregon Museum of Art and The Victoria Albert Museum, London, England.

Sara Swink creates self possessed colorful characters that seem to exist in a playfully subconscious world. Whether they are human or creature, there are often elements the bizarre or the subliminal in their gestures, expressions, and adornments. For Swink, art and dream worlds are interconnected. Both invite the unconscious to become conscious, both rely on a language of symbols open to interpretation, and both contain clues about psychological patterns. She begins building her figures using gritty earthen clay, incising and adding color with layered oxides, underglazes and glazes. She then fires everything in midrange temperatures giving a matte quality to her saturated colors.

Hours: Wednesday - Saturday 12-5