Artist Michael Brophy spoke at Portland State University yesterday evening to a packed house. Here's what I heard, once somebody unlocked the doors so Emily and I could sneak into the lecture:
Brophy on how early Oregonian settlers viewed the gigantic trees that used to cover our land: "Large, pernicious weeds."
On his portraits of clearcuts and stumps: "I imagined the landscape as a character that had agency."
On his move into abstraction: "I just wanted to use a really fat brush."
On people: "I think we're integrated into the landscape, as humans, and we always have been."
On the Oregon State Capitol dome in Salem: "There's a stump on the top of our capitol, and a guy with an axe."
On the Rose City: "We live in the biggest clearcut in the state, which is Portland."
On working process: "Painting saves my life. You have to have a big taste for isolation. It's meditative."
On the Regional Art label: "I've always thought of it as a metaphor to address everybody—it's not like I'm the center of the universe here in Portland, Oregon."
On painting en plein air: "Awful. Carrying all that crap!"
Brophy is represented by Laura Russo in Portland and by G. Gibson in Seattle. Above: "Road," 2007. —TLB
