Disjecta Hosts
HENK PANDER "MARYALICE PAINTINGS"

September 11 - October 16, 2010
Gallery Hours: Friday - Sunday 12:00pm - 5:00pm, or by appointment
Opening Reception with the Artist, Saturday, September 11 from 6-10 pm.

Disjecta is pleased to present an exhibition of paintings and works on paper by esteemed artist Henk Pander. The works in this exhibition document Pander's close relationship with his granddaughter, Maryalice, who lived with Pander and his wife, Delores, until she was twelve. During this time, Maryalice was a common fixture in Pander's studio, either as a subject, or working at her own easel alongside her grandfather, especially after he built a studio extension to the family home in 2004.

The exhibition is organized by Meagan Atiyeh. In 2004, Atiyeh interviewed Pander for The Organ Review of Arts, and discovered the Maryalice paintings on a studio visit for that project. Says Atiyeh: "I immediately found these paintings so compelling. Henk's work is traditionally highly composed and refined. These paintings of Maryalice had a more immediately expressive, gestural quality, perhaps due in part to the difficulty of getting a young girl, then teenager, to sit for a portrait."

The portraits began at Maryalice's request, wanting her grandfather to paint her. Later, Henk had to entice her to sit with the trade of a new pair of shoes, or the "new purse" that is prominently featured in the 2006 work. In this way, the portraits serve to document the psychological nuances of a father/daughter relationship. Only one of the works in this exhibition has been exhibited, and ultimately all were made for pleasure, for family, and not for market, which further informs the care found in making and, ultimately, viewing them, especially as a series.

Included in the exhibition are oil paintings from 1998-2010. In preparation for this exhibition, Pander began a new portrait of Maryalice with Delores, his wife of 33 years, who was then suffering from the late stages of cancer. Sadly, Delores passed away June 24, 2010.

The subject of a number of museum exhibitions, including an upcoming retrospective at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Henk Pander's work is represented in every important institutional collection in the Northwest. His vast body of work demonstrates the practiced eye of a watcher, from his remembered scenes of Nazi occupied Europe to the dramatic canvasses documenting the wreck of the New Carissa off the Oregon coast, to the many commissions for public agencies, to drawings, photocollages and paintings created from his post 9/11 visit to lower Manhattan.

In the four decades since Pander arrived in Portland, he has had a hand in shaping the local art community the city enjoys today. During the 60s and 70s, Pander made ink-drawn political and cultural posters for a variety of causes. He was a founding member of the alternative Storefront Theatre in 1970. Later, he was the force behind The Visual Chronicle, a Regional Arts & Culture Council project to document the city through the eyes and works of local artists. In 1991, Pander was bestowed with the first-ever Oregon Arts Commission Master Artist Fellowship. In 2005, he received a Governor's Arts Award and the following year was honored with a Visual Arts Fellowship from the Regional Arts & Culture Council.