Oregon’s landscapes come alive in James Lavadour’s ‘Land of Origin’ at Boise Art Museum

Explore the captivating world of artist James Lavadour at the Boise Art Museum, as his “Land of Origin” exhibition reveals over 40 years of work.

BOISE, Idaho — The Boise Art Museum offers so many unique pieces of art that rotate throughout the year. One of their new traveling exhibitions is now on display, and it’s the work of an artist out of Oregon. The art in the room is a culmination of 40 plus years of work by James Lavadour.

“I don’t think when I paint, I just paint. It’s more of an event; I react to painting,” Lavadour said.

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That reaction comes from Lavadour’s time walking the Oregon landscape. He says that’s where he draws most of his inspiration from.

“These painting are an accumulation of all those events and emotions and that experience,” Lavadour said.

From mountains to rivers, you can see the Oregon land all throughout his work. He spends time walking every day in his home on the Umatilla Indian reservation in northeastern Oregon.

“The time that he spends learning from the land, what he brings back into the studio and how that process reflects the natural process in land,” the McCosh curator at the JSMA at the University of Oregon Danielle Knapp said.

She helped curate Lavadour’s life’s work into this traveling exhibition.

“Paint behaves the way that natural elements do and one of the things he says is everything that’s in the land is in me, everything that’s in me is in the land, and everything that’s in the land is in paint. At its elemental form, paint is pigment in water,” Knapp said.

Lavadour says he has worked on some paintings for years at a time. Working on many panels at a time switching from canvas to canvas, as he goes through the year.

“Eventually the finished paintings accumulate, and I compose them like you would poetry,” Lavadour said.

That poetry, not written, but painted. Forty plus years of work now culminated all in one room.

“I’ve never seen all of these paintings in one place at one time and it’s my opportunity to sort of take a good look at where I’ve come from and what’s happened to me,” Lavadour said.

We’ve all traveled and experienced different parts of the land. Knapp says she feels like that is why it is so easy to relate to Lavadour’s work in this “Land of Origin.”

“There’s something in at that speaks to all of our experiences of being in nature, being part of nature and the way that can fulfill us,” Knapp said.

Lavadour’s Land of Origin exhibition is now open to the public.