Ellen Blazich and Kayla Marie Carlson: Silence and Slow Time
On View: May 1st – May 30th, 2026
Opening Reception: May 1st, 4-7pm
Hours: Thursday – Saturday, noon-5pm
In her discussion of John Keats’ famously ekphrastic Ode on a Grecian Urn, the poet Camille Guthrie asks “What happens when we gaze at a work of art? Does it speak to us through time, or are its silence and distance incomprehensible?” Keats raises more questions than he answers about the proper approach to truth and beauty, and his own work may be regarded as incomprehensible by contemporary readers, but the experience he captures, the profound awe of human creativity, is a timeless one. This exhibition features work by painters conjuring this timeless sense, their practice rooted in historical knowledge that speaks to our present time.
Ellen Blazich approaches her materials with experimental rigor. Drawing on her background in ceramics, mixing glazes from raw minerals, she completes her palette with homemade paints and oilsticks, crafted using her own variations on age-old technique. Her recent paintings continue a conversation with the Expressionist and Post-Impressionist painters whose work she encountered in her European travels, juxtaposing allusions to James Ensor and Vincent van Gogh with motifs drawn from her daily life in Portland’s artistic community.
Kayla Marie Carlson’s heroic paintings capture the vast, historic sweep of classical mythology in tender, attentive detail. Her expressive landscapes are anchored by stoic depictions of Greek sculpture, their calm, watchful presence regarding the contemporary world with detachment. Her focus on antiquity and the skittering marks that make up her trees and landforms invoke Cy Twombly’s Roman explorations, casting Odysseus rather than Catullus in the central role. She punctuates her canvases with tiny wildflowers, reminiscent of Gustav Klimt’s fantastical botanicals, a reference emphasized in her most metallic painting, We Come In Blind With Our Timing.
Artmaking is, at its best, a continuous learning experience, finding new ways to relate to one’s materials, practice, artistic peers, and sources of inspiration. Visitors may find some inspiration of their own in the curated selection of books the artists have placed in the gallery.
-Rose Lewis