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That guy taking
pictures while perched on an outcropping at the Oregon Zoo,
the one with a special interest in big cats
just might be Portland artist, Berle Bledsoe. Bledsoe, a self-taught artist, has been painting
seriously for about twelve years His first efforts were
done many years ago, but marriage, raising a family,
and his work as a warehouseman for
Unisource intervened, and soon put art on the back burner.
When he retired his wife encouraged him to start
again and he now devotes many hours to his
rapidly expanding career.
Berle is a regular at the Lake Area Artists
show and the Lake Oswego Festival of the Arts. His work has
been shown at Art Splash in
Tualatin
Berle prefers working from photographs
and is an expert at imposing imagination and impression
on reality. His first love is doing
portraits, both of people and animals. Berle has a
unique ability to see beyond the superficial and reveal
the inner beauty of
his subject, a talent he brings to both his portraits
and to his wildlife and landscape works. Many of his
works
depicting wild animals are a result of his frequent
trips to the
Zoo.
He measures his success by whether a person
identifies with his subject and has a good feeling about
It. When someone looks at his work and feels they have either been
there, seen it, done it, or felt it, Berle feels he has
done his job well. He wants viewers to connect with his art. (Belinki & Duprey
Gallery) |
