Artfully celebrate the new year

Much like children who swirl colors together with their fingers, not caring to be precise but simply enjoying the feeling, many professional artists express their love for their craft through their work. Two Oregon artists, Kim Murton and Alison O’Donoghue, will have their art featured during January at the Mary Lou Zeek Gallery in the show “Playful Art.”

The ensemble seeks to showcase color, quirkiness and fun. Murton’s display will include her ceramic creations. Her sculptures are often bright colored faces with large, disproportionate features. O’Donoghue, a Portlander, has her paintings on display in conjunction with the ceramics. A painter for over 20 years, O’Donoghue’s art is layered and colorful, featuring scenes from daily life. The figures depicted in her pieces complement Murton’s ceramics in that they share similar shapes.

“Playful Art” opens January 6 and runs through January 31. An opening reception is scheduled on January 7 from 5 ENDASH 7 p.m. where guests can meet with both artists.

To bring art to life

As with many creative pursuits, visual art can be realistic or imaginative. With bountiful nature available in the Northwest, painter Pat Jackman finds no lack of subject matter for her natural art.

A local and nationally known painter of wildlife, Jackman will be featured in an exhibit in the Enid Joy Mount Gallery at Keizer Art Association during January. Juried in shows across the country, her replications of birds and other animals take on a stark quality in detail that she creates with colored pencil.

On January 3, a public reception is scheduled from 4 ENDASH 7 p.m.

Exhibition and lecture welcome painter to Salem

Harry Widman is not only a painter, but a scholar and teacher of art as well. A resident of Portland, Widman taught at the Pacific Northwest College of Art for 36 years, and at the end of January his work will be displayed for students and the public alike to view at Hallie Ford Museum of Art. The show, “Harry Widman: Image, Myth, and Modernism,” displays a collection that spans over 60 years, from his early college paintings to his most recent work. The show, organized by Willamette art history professor Roger Hull, will feature 38 paintings and 17 paper pieces drawn from private and public collections. Widman’s paintings combine abstract sensibility with social and political commentary.

Preceding its January 31 opening is a free lecture by Hull on the career of the feature artist on January 30 from 5 ENDASH 6 p.m. in Cone Chapel on the second floor of Waller Hall. A preview reception of the exhibit will follow from 6 ENDASH 8 p.m. The Portland painter’s pieces will be available for viewing through March 29.