James Lavadour, JAMES LAVADOUR 1997-2023 II, 2023, oil on paper, 18” x 24” (21 1/2” x 24 1/4” framed)
PDX CONTEMPORARY ART is pleased to present Planet Waves, an exhibition of new works on paper by artist James Lavadour. Much like his works on panels, these paintings are made over months and sometimes years, adding and scraping away paint to create dynamic abstractions that reference the landscape.
James Lavadour lives and works on the Umatilla Reservation near Pendleton, Oregon. He begins each day in the studio, rising before the sun, to get started on work. Just when the sun begins to rise, the Artist leaves his studio to go for a walk or a drive to witness the land waking up. Although Lavadour’s paintings are not based on direct observation, the time spent looking, hearing, and feeling the natural world that surrounds him—his Native land— deeply informs his work. Lavadour speaks about being one with the land. His physical, process-oriented practice is one that yields abstract expressionist paintings; accumulations of marks through addition and subtraction are acts of nature in the same way that geological events are acts of nature.
Among the awards and fellowships Lavadour has received over the course of his career are the 2019 Hallie Ford Fellowship Award from The Ford Family Foundation, an Honorary Doctorate of Human Letters from Eastern Oregon University, the Eiteljorg Museum Artist Fellowship, the Award for Visual Arts from the Flintridge Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Award, the Seattle Art Museum’s Betty Bowen Memorial Recognition Award, and numerous large commissions throughout the Pacific Northwest. A selection of his exhibitions include solo shows at Cumberland Gallery (Nashville, TN), PDX CONTEMPORARY ART (Portland, OR), Grover/Thurston Gallery (Seattle, WA), Gail Severn Gallery (Ketchum, ID), Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art (Indianapolis, IN), Maryhill Museum of Art (Goldendale, WA), and the Portland Art Museum (Portland, OR), among others. Lavadour has also been a part of group exhibitions at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, AR), the Smithsonian Institute National Museum of the American Indian (Washington, DC), Tacoma Art Museum (Tacoma, WA), Boise Art Museum (Boise, ID), and the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, Canada), the National Museum of the American Indian (New York, NY), and Toledo Art Museum (Toledo, OH). James Lavadour’s work was also featured as one of only 102 artists selected for the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art’s seminal survey exhibition, State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now and at the 55th Venice Biennale in Personal Structures.
Lavadour’s works are included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY), Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (Washington, DC), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, AR), Seattle Art Museum (Seattle, WA), Portland Art Museum (Portland, OR), Tacoma Art Museum (Tacoma, WA), Boise Art Museum (Boise, ID), Crocker Art Museum (Sacramento, CA), the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art (Indianapolis, IN), the Hallie Ford Museum of Art (Salem, OR), The Hood Museum (Hanover, NH), The Heard Museum (Phoenix, AZ), the corporate collections of Bank of America and Microsoft, as well as numerous other public and private collections.
Lavadour has been the subject of many publications, articles, and reviews, including pieces in Artforum, The Oregonian, Oregon Arts Watch, Willamette Week, Village Voice, The New York Times, art ltd., The Stranger, Portland Mercury, The Seattle Times, Artweek, and Art in America.
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