Meditations on a Coastal Landscape  

Waterstone Gallery, Portland OR

Nov. 4-29, 2026

Both in the making, and now the viewing, these paintings are like meditation pieces. In the making, each one has had many sessions at the easel over weeks or months with much reflection along the way.  Each is a product of work to depict a merging or blending together of the experience of living with this landscape and the powerful effect it has on me.  Now in the viewing, as one gives them focus and attention, the thoughts and impressions that come to mind is what they are about.  I have my own personal relationship to them; I invite you to do the same. 

In painting this landscape, I am reaching for the transcendent using the emotional voice of color to do the speaking.  Every single color vibrates with a unique energy that carries/is an emotional communication. As the colors of a painting come together, this coming together of emotional juxtapositions describes what the painting is about, which like music, is nonverbal. 

My work has a lot in common with symbolism* as in the original symbolist movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  Like the original symbolists I am not describing the literal landscape but am working to depict inner emotional states that the landscape prompts in me.  And at the same time, I expect myself to be true to the landscape.  As my mentor Wolf Kahn would say, “When in New Mexico, don’t paint the Caribbean!” 

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From our house and studio in an old growth coastal forest within the Cascade Head Biosphere Reserve,  I experience the landscape through all the seasons and am in sync with the changes that cycle through. This landscape has become the focus of my creativity. 

Also, an important ingredient in my studio practice comes from my long experience of making color. From paint making I learned much more about color than I could ever learn from painting alone. This technical knowledge about color has become a foundation of my work as a painter and sets my intuition free to be a full partner in the painting process. 

Robert Gamblin 

Web: RobertGamblinStudio.com

Insta: @RGamblin

*The original symbolists were in reaction to realism and the scientific and materialist mindset of their time.  On one hand I celebrate realism and all other approaches to art making, but am critical of the scientific and materialistic mindset, including the digital age that is now dominant in our culture.  My artistic reaction to this is not because it’s wrong, but because of what is missing and being lost with its ascendance: the ancient spiritual relationship to nature and the land.

The major themes of this exhibit: 

Sitka portraits

The old growth Sitka forest we live in has many 100+ year old trees. At this point in their lives, they  exhibit extraordinary character.  A few of these trees make up my Sitka Portrait series. I try to paint them as if they are humans sitting for their portrait.  I think these portraits honor each tree as an individual  that has a life of its own, witnessing time from one spot on the earth, living through each dry summer, dancing wildly thorough the winter storms from the southwest, and basking in the fog in their crowns on their best days.    

Light:  

The subject of a  number of these paintings is purely the light that falls on a large open space.  In some of them the light vibrates or shimmers. The vibration series attempts to depict the pure energy from the sun that I sense when I am in these spaces.  In other paintings the light has “solidified” into atmosphere.  That atmosphere is filled with a soft light in contrast to the vibration pieces.  

Forest 

For me the forest is the hardest to paint of this landscape.  I consider each forest painting in this show an experiment as I continue to search for an approach to do justice to painting the outside of the forest vs the inside.