Pernoctalian

ink, dye and graphite on board

6.5″ x 4.25″

My ninth show goes up this week at Froelick Gallery, 714 NW Davis Street, Portland, OR. There will be a gallery talk on July 18 at 11AM and a reception on First Thursday, August 6.

PARK, n. An area of land set aside for public use, as:
a. A piece of land with few or no buildings within or adjoining a town, maintained for recreational and ornamental purposes.
b. A landscaped city square.

v.tr.
1. To put or leave (a vehicle) for a time in a certain location.

While the subjects of many of these paintings are parks within Portland, the title of this show is meant not as a noun but as an imperative: Stop the car and get out. These are places that are best experienced, or indeed can only be seen, by traveling on foot.

Whether deliberately planned or coincidental, these places allow us to observe the city without being swept by in the flow of traffic, and to experience time as changes of light and atmosphere, both ephemeral and eternal.

City structures observed at length also become establishing shots for countless possible narratives, historical sites that will never be in any guidebook but where, every day, people mark unrecorded events with contemplation, celebration, or mourning.

Here is one such story: on March 23rd, I took a walk on a drizzly, near-freezing morning in early spring. The landscape I encountered - the bleakness of bare branches and concrete contrasting with a surprising, exuberant pink- was so different from the summer’s overgrown vines , comfortable temperatures and clear skies that Portland itself seemed transformed, and inspired its own series of paintings.

While city parks may be designed to give city dwellers some exposure to “nature” (or at least plants) it is those parks we create ourselves, by stopping and watching and drawing, which begin to reveal the entire spirit of the place .

ink, dye and graphite on board

4.25″ x 6.5″

ink, dye and graphite on board

4.25″ x 6.5″

 ink, dye and graphite on board

4.25″ x 6.5″

ink, dye and graphite on board

4.25″ x 10.5″

ink, dye and graphite on board

4.25″ x 6.5″

ink, dye and graphite on board

4.25″ x 6.5″

ink, dye and graphite on board

4.25″ x 6.5″

ink, dye and graphite on board

4.25″ x 6.5″

ink, dye and graphite on board

4.25″ x 6.5″

ink, dye, graphite on board

ink, dye, graphite on board

ink, dye, graphite on board

I’ve just returned from a short, wonderful trip to Portland as part of the preparation for my new show at Froelick Gallery. There will be even more paintings up soon, as well as details about the new show. For sketches, photographs, backstory and random updates, visit  pernoctalian-sketchbooks.net. 

ink, dye, graphite on board

4.25″ x 6.5″

ink, dye, graphite on board

4.25″ x 10.5″

ink, dye, graphite on board

4.25″ x 6.5″

ink, dye, graphite on board

4.25″ x 6.5″

Magee Field appears in this month’s issue of Harper’s Magazine.
Subscribers can see the page online here.

Interstate Bridge was reviewed by D. K. Row last week in the Oregonian’s online and print editions. (Full review behind link.)

Each work, even those set in daylight, seems caught at a midnight hour that will stay eternal…On one level, Wilburn is interested in documenting the life of the bridge, but on another, she merely uses the bridge as a shifting metaphor, an embodiment of life’s varied, mundane and limitless activity.

For those of you in Portland this winter, my eighth show will be up at Froelick Gallery in their new location, 714 NW Davis St. Several pieces from the show are posted on this site: click on the thumbnails to display larger images.

In order to unify a show of work done in a variety of media, I focused on a very specific part of the Portland landscape: during my most recent visit to Portland, I spent many days walking over and around the Interstate Bridge.

On summer mornings, there’s a marked contrast between the visual and tactile experiences of walking across a bridge that is part of an interstate highway: clear skies and crisp shadows and high distant views, traffic noise and constant rough vibration underfoot.

Monoprints and graphite drawings on blue paper, largely monochromatic and low-contrast, are a venture into a different medium and also serve as studies focusing on the structural elements of the bridge. I let the resulting geometry and texture in the bridge studies suggest the color and mood of the sky and landscapes in the dye paintings.

ink, dye, graphite on board

4.25″ x 6.5″

6″ x 9″, graphite and monoprint on Arpa handmade paper

study for Interstate Bridge Looking East

ink, dye, graphite on board

4.25″ x 6.5″