Northwest School (art) - Style

Style

The style of the Northwest School is characterized by the use of symbols of the nature of Western Washington, as well as the diffuse lighting characteristic of the Skagit Valley area. The lighting and choice of earthy tonal ranges in the color is one of the most important qualities of Northwest art. Tobey, whose artwork did not include as much natural Northwest subject matter, is identified as Northwest style because of the soft pastel colors which he used, and the dark mist chroma of lighting, with few stark shadows.

The Northwest artists were labeled as mystics, although some forcefully denied this label. They denied being a "school" of art, but they did know one another. Callahan hosted salons in which the others participated. Anderson and Graves travelled together and painted in the North Cascades and elsewhere.

Dealers such as Zoe Dusanne, Gordon Woodside and John Braseth of the Woodside/Braseth Gallery as well as museum professionals grouped the four artists together, as did journalists. Their styles showed unifying themes that suggested something unique and previously unseen from a far corner of the planet. A review of the titles of some of the paintings leads to spiritual interpretations of northwest life.

In addition to the local natural setting and the Asian influence, the Northwest School also shows some influence from surrealism, cubism and abstract expressionism. The cubist influence is shown to some extent in Kenneth Callahan’s Prism and the Dark Globe (1946) and Tobey’s Western Town (1944). All these artists both loved the pacific northwest and were keenly aware of the larger world of which it was part. Their work was recognized for being both essentially northwest and far from provincial.

Many younger artists around the Pacific Northwest found resonance in how qualities of the region seemed so strongly evident while something universal also glowed in these earlier artists' works. Influences and inspirations traceable to these earlier painters can be seen in work by many contemporary artists. One notable example would be Jay Steensma, who died in 1997. He left numerous moody, misty, "northwesty" paintings-some of them titled with admiring reference to Anderson, Tobey, Graves, and Helmi Juvonen.

The works of artists such as photographer Mary Randlett and sculptor Tony Angell relate strongly to the Northwest School. Angell’s sculpture often incorporates birds, as did Washington’s, Gilkey’s and McCracken’s work. The flowing and silhouette style of Angell’s work closely ties it to McCracken’s sculpture. Randlett takes black and white photographs of northwest landscapes that often have wonderfully painterly qualities.