Wood-fueled.Byline: Bob Keefer The Register-Guard Art lovers who have been around Eugene for a few years probably think of white-hatted chefs when they hear the name Mike Van. That's because Van got to be known by turning out scores of bright, whimsical watercolors of chefs working in kitchens, selling many of his paintings through the former Alder alder (ôl`dər), name for deciduous trees and shrubs of the genus Alnus of the family Betulaceae (birch family), widely distributed, especially in mountainous and moist areas of the north temperate zone and in the Andes. Gallery downtown. But Van, a 76-year-old retired high school art teacher, has moved on. These days he's painting firewood. Firewood? Check out his new show at White Lotus White Lotus Chinese Buddhist millenarian movement that was often persecuted because of its association with rebellion. The movement had roots in 4th-century worship of the Buddha Amitabha, whose devotional cult inspired Mao Ziyuan to form the White Lotus Society, a pious . Van's been hauling firewood into his South Eugene studio by the wheelbarrow full. There he's been posing chunks of pine and oak and cherry and creating watercolors and oil and acrylic paintings that range from straightforward portraits - of firewood, no less - to complicated studies of the interplay between the organic surfaces of logs and the mathematical patterns they suggest. These paintings are as much - and as little - about the actual logs as were Van's earlier watercolors about cooking. "You know, I see all the cooking shows on television now. My paintings of chefs were really never about that," he said one recent morning. "They were about white space in the picture field." (OK, just try explaining that to all those Eugene residents who have Mike Van watercolors hanging in their kitchens.) Van has covered a lot of ground painting firewood. At one end of the spectrum is a 2005 watercolor called ``Firewood I.'' This sumptuous big portrait of a softwood softwood Timber obtained from coniferous trees (mainly of the pine and fir families). With the exception of bald cypress, tamarack, and larch, softwood trees are evergreens. log, its split edges turning blue, packs a surprising amount of emotion. The rich colors are completely engaging, from the pale ochre of the log to the deep reds of its core. Van posed the log on one end, sitting on top of a shiny surface. Step back from the painting, and it looks, for all the world, like an old midrise building - the Flatiron Building The Fuller Building or as it is better known, the Flatiron Building, is in the borough of Manhattan, and was one of the tallest buildings in New York City upon its completion in 1902. , say, in New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. . The painting was included in the Oregon State University Oregon State University, at Corvallis; land-grant and state supported; coeducational; chartered 1858 as Corvallis College, opened 1865. In 1868 it was designated Oregon's land-grant agricultural college and was taken over completely by the state in 1885. ``Art About Agriculture'' show a couple of years ago. ``I really started looking at individual pieces of wood after doing this one,'' Van said. At the other extreme is a painting like ``WEMB Wall,'' a two-foot-square oil painting Van completed this year. The painting shows a dozen highly stylized styl·ize tr.v. styl·ized, styl·iz·ing, styl·iz·es 1. To restrict or make conform to a particular style. 2. To represent conventionally; conventionalize. half-round logs arranged in a square, three logs on a side. Their split edges form a perfectly geometric square a portable instrument in the form of a square frame for ascertaining distances and heights by measuring angles. See also: Geometric that seems to rise above the reality of wood and bark. (We'll leave it to gallery-goers to deduce de·duce tr.v. de·duced, de·duc·ing, de·duc·es 1. To reach (a conclusion) by reasoning. 2. To infer from a general principle; reason deductively: the origin of the title.) "You see wood piles everywhere," Van said. "It occurred to me you didn't have to stack wood exactly that way. And there is that tension between a three-dimensional object and a flat surface to explore." Don't miss "Cherry Pine Spiral," a full-sheet watercolor that's hanging in the front window at White Lotus. Van painted a pile of loose logs on the left side of the painting; on the right, he stood them on end and arranged them into a tight spiral. "I went out to my wood pile and picked up a whole series of graduated sizes and split them in half," he said. "And I brought a whole wheelbarrow full and dropped them on the studio floor." His work is all about play, Van says. When he was 5, he says in an artist's statement An artist's statement is a brief text composed by an artist and intended to explain, justify, and contextualize his or her body of work. Artists often have a short (50-100 word) and a long (500-1000 word) version of the same statement, and they may maintain and revise these , he played with blocks to see what they would look like in various arrangements. Now he's doing the same thing with firewood, seven decades later. The show also contains a number of Van's paintings and drawings of crows. They are a bit darker and more calligraphic cal·lig·ra·phy n. 1. a. The art of fine handwriting. b. Works in fine handwriting considered as a group. 2. Handwriting. than his firewood paintings, but still - like those chefs of earlier years - his crows are ordinary subjects that he uses to create more transcendent images. "They are around," he says. "So I paint them." EXHIBIT REVIEW Playing with Blocks: Watching Crows What: Paintings and drawings by Eugene artist Mike Van Where: White Lotus Gallery, 767 Willamette St. When: Through Oct. 6 Hours: 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday |
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