Image: Whatcom Museum of History and Art, Bellingham
‘Forested’ is the second installment of the Whatcom Museum’s ‘From the Vault’ series, which highlights groundbreaking artists and works from the museum’s permanent collection.
Elizabeth Colborne, born in 1885, and Helen Loggie, born in 1895, are presented as foundational artists within that collection, and both were inspired by the forests of the Pacific Northwest.
Loggie was a master of drawing and etching, capturing the crags, twists, and sweeping tree canopies familiar to her in Bellingham and on Orcas Island. Colborne’s color woodcuts and tempera paintings from the 1920s and 1930s evoke Japanese woodblock ukiyo-e prints while embracing the decorative motifs of the Arts and Crafts movement.
Colborne’s forests shift between intimate studies and dramatic vistas, with towering old-growth trees framing distant views of Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. Other regional artists inspired by the same landscapes, including Thomas Wood and Karen Lené Rudd, round out this second installment of the series, which features works from the Whatcom Museum’s permanent collection.
