Aaron Voronoff Trotter
Six months ago I decided to create a special birthday gift for a 200 year old city. During 3 visits I composed enough sketches of Astoria to make a deck of 52 Illustrated Playing Cards. It is part of my Pacific Northwest series which includes Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, B.C. Each deck features famous landmarks and neighborhood places. To find the places that are included in this exhibition, I studied the tourist maps, talked to locals at Ft. George, and got advice from a barista for the main targets. But sometimes the places just found me as I walked around exploring. Some buildings spoke louder than others, like the abandoned Flavel house. Along the Riverwalk, I was surprised by the wildness of the Columbia as a dramatic contrast to the tranquility of the river in Portland.
My drawings are influenced by the Renaissance etchings of Albrecht Durer and the 19th century books of William Morris. I draw on location, sketching the composition with a ball point pen. Later I embellish and crosshatch the details at my studio in Portland, using my Great-Aunt Ethel’s 1910 ink pen.
In the next year I hope to illustrate a number of cities on the east coast including Washington, D.C., New York City, and New Orleans. The extended world sketching tour will include Paris, Rome, and London. When I return to the Northwest, I hope to rent a small studio in Astoria and look out at the Columbia as I embellish and finish hundreds of sketches to be made into a world series of Illustrated Playing Cards.
Special thanks to Serge Trotter for assistance with matting and framing the originals for this exhibition.
Aaron Voronoff Trotter's Work at RiverSea Gallery
Click on the following thumbnails to see bigger pictures.
Past Exhibits at RiverSea Gallery
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