Abstract Realms: Landscapes from the Permanent Collection

Landscape painting has an extensive history in the Euro-American tradition, widely popularized and established as an independent genre via the Dutch painters of the 16^th century. In the centuries since, it has constantly been reinvented. Abstract Realms presents five works from the JSMA’s permanent collection that embody increasingly abstract or expressive approaches to landscape painting since mid-century.  

Five artists are featured in this exhibition: most were teachers and most spent significant time in the Pacific Northwest: Lucinda Parker, who is based in Portland and is the only contemporary artist presented here; Emanuel Piladakis, a UO alumnus who taught at Oregon State University before returning to Greece; David McCosh, an influential UO professor who taught and painted in Eugene for over four decades; and Charles Bryan Ryan, who provided art lessons to his fellow soldiers while deployed in WWII and later instructed at the University of Oregon. Abstract Realms also features a painting by Catalan-American artist Pierre Daura, former faculty at Lynchburg College and Randolph-Macon Woman’s College.

Abstract Realms seeks to emphasize each artist’s unique approach to abstraction and stylization and their diverging sense of line, color, and form. Itwas curated by Alexis Garcia, 2023-2025 Post-Graduate Museum Fellow in European and American Art, in response to JSMA’s Fall 2025 exhibition James Lavadour: Land of Origin.