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Mike and Marla Baggetta
September 13 - October 7, 2008
More About the Artists:
Mike Baggetta
Marla Baggetta
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For Immediate Release:
One Couple Creates Separate Visions of Landscape and Light at RiverSea Gallery
Two Oregon artists, Mike Baggetta and Marla Baggetta will be exhibiting new paintings at RiverSea Gallery
September 13th through October 7th. Marla Baggetta has been showing her pastel landscapes at the gallery
since early 2006, but this is the first show there for her husband, an abstract painter. Both are well
known to art collectors throughout the west. Meet the artists at the opening reception on Saturday,
September 13th from 5:00 to 8:00 pm. Musical entertainment will be provided by Portland jazz guitarist,
Frank Tribble.
If you peer deep through the layers of paint, you'll see that Mike Baggetta's abstract expressionist paintings
and monotypes are an evolution from his years of painting and drawing commercially, his formal art training,
and his years as a professional designer.
But you won't have to have to dig deep, because Baggetta's works have the quality of a supernova, something
ancient and seething that explodes into bold expressions of color and energy.
"I'm fascinated with the physicality of paint and the juxtaposition of texture and color to create compositions
that are both dynamic and highly poetic," Baggetta says.
Baggetta's works emerge slowly and organically. He often works on up to thirty pieces at a time, tackling a
variety of surfaces from paper and wood, to canvas.
His interests in geology, architecture and design creep through many of his paintings.
"In some respects my painting is kind of a geologic process," explains Baggetta. "Putting paint on, and taking it
off. I'm not totally in control, and that's why I get excited about it."
After years of working as a designer and art director for clients such as MGM Studios, Universal Pictures,
and Disney, Baggetta moved north to West Linn, Oregon, with his wife Marla in 1993. The diverse beauty of the
Pacific Northwest and the local vibrant arts community motivated Baggetta to reconnect with his personal work
and vision.
Almost immediately, Baggetta found a resonant voice within the abstract genre, layering his paint and
ideas in an exuberant, expressionistic style. Baggetta's sense of layout and design meld with heavily
worked surfaces and bold compositions.
"I allow the unexpected to happen and that can completely change the original direction of the artwork,"
says Baggetta.
His wife has taken a different direction. In Marla Baggetta's expressive landscapes, one can almost hear
the trickling of streams, and the rustling of spring grasses. The canvases are vivid, vibrant with the quick
strokes of the artist, and yet they often evoke a sense of peace and contemplation.
It's not an effect Baggetta aims for, but rather something that happens when she yields the creative mind to
the force of intuition and calm.
"My husband says to me all the time, 'you should go paint, because you're the most calm when you paint,'"
says Baggetta. "I think what's coming through in these paintings is that I am the most calm, the most reflective,
and the most satiated when I'm painting."
Many of Baggetta's scenes are inspired by the near-by Oregon countryside.
Like her husband, Baggetta also worked in the commercial art world for the likes of Walt Disney, Nissan Motors,
and Houghton Mifflin Publishing.
Marla also found the move north both liberating and inspiring. She quickly established herself as one of the
West Coast's leading representational painters with her warm-hued pastels and oil paintings that evoke the
changing seasons and the moods inspired by the elements of nature and light.
Baggetta is a signature member of the Pastel Society of America and the Pastel Society of Oregon, and has
won numerous awards for her highly sought after works. She has been featured in Pastel Journal, the premiere
publication for pastel painters. She is also the author of Step by Step Pastel, published by Walter Foster
Publishing.
Marla's paintings are no less expressive than the works of her abstract-minded partner, and yet she takes the
landscape very seriously. Her pieces draw the viewer in to a river bend, to an expanse of rolling hills, or to
a snow-dusted stand of alders with the skillfully rendered strokes of a master artist.
"I am a great believer in the fundamentals of painting, drawing, composition, color theory and the thought that
paintings communicate an idea through this vocabulary," says Baggetta.
Baggetta also teaches painting workshops in the Portland area.
"Teaching is very challenging because it requires having to verbalize all the things you've learned to do
intuitively. It makes you walk your talk and forces a formal basis for the creative process," says Baggetta.
Baggetta has taught at Art Center College of Design, Pacific Northwest College of Art, Creative Arts
Community-Menucha, the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, and for West Linn/Wilsonville Community Education
as well as in various workshop settings.
The Baggettas met and married twenty-two years ago while attending the Art Center College of Design in
Pasadena, California.
"We've always worked within close proximity and it's always clicked," says Marla Baggetta. "We actually
have separate rooms in the studio, so I can close the door on him if I want to, but I don't have to do
that very often."
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