Day 284: The Art Museum

I added this new photograph to Creative Journey in my Photography section, Hansen's Rooster

My husband Dale and I went on a date on Sunday! We headed over to Spokane, WA to visit the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture. There were a number of exhibits there. The two I enjoyed the most were Sudan: The Land and the People, an exhibit of photographs, and Gaylen Hansen: Three Decades of Paintings, an exhibit of artwork by a regional artist.

This was my favorite painting in the exhibit. It's called:

At first glance, Hansen's artwork looks like it was done by an amateur who just said, "Hey, I feel like painting!" Then he got out his brushes and paint, pinned the canvas to the wall, made some cartoon characters, and globbed on the paint. All his works have a painted frame on the edge of the canvas and were literally pinned to the wall. Very informal.

But the more I looked at the paintings, the more they grew on me. There is a lot of humor here! A lot of crazy stuff. He's got trout swimming in a stream of tulips. A still life of a fish, a tulip and a bison standing on his head ... all out of proportion to real life size, but in proportion to each other. He has self-portraits of his alter ego, the Kernal. He paints things I know about here in the Northwest, but they are all in odd colors and the sizes are off balance. It's fun stuff.

This rooster, though ... just pulled me in. Really like it.

After spending time at the art museum, Dale and I did a bit of furniture shopping, drove around downtown a bit, then went out to dinner. I've got a couple more Spokane photos to share with you this week.