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Hiking in old-growth forests inspired Lee Musgrave's Stumped Series (The Observer/JEFF PETERSEN).

By Jeff Petersen

Observer Staff Writer

Like Oregon's famous colliding rivers, near Glide, Lee Musgrave's art takes viewers to a soul-stirring place.

There the forces of nature and man collide.

The constant reshaping of the land, the tug-of-war between stewardship and consumption, is the thread that weaves itself through Musgrave's paintings,

The Lyle, Wash., artist takes his inspiration from the great variety of the Columbia River Gorge. His initial immersion into the transitional zone between west side and east side, from pine and oak forests to sage, mountains, rivers and rock formations, inspired his Manifest Destiny Series.

"It's an area where nature and the forces of nature make their presence felt on people. It's almost the opposite of the Los Angeles experience."

Oh yeah, Musgrave used to live in Santa Monica, Calif., and drew inspiration from landscape architects and gardening teams who created their own little worlds.

"There, nature is anything but natural looking. It's very artificial, fantastical, controlled."

From that experience in the 1980s, Musgrave created the Urbane Happenstance Series.

Musgrave also had a thing for hiking in old-growth forests, which has inspired his Stumped Series.

"Old-growth forest is really different from tree farms," he said, with 10 times the variety of trees and plants, and far more variety in birds.

"It even smells different," he said.

Less than 1 percent of old growth is still surviving in North America, Musgrove said.

"It seems like we could be generous enough to save it and see how long it lives without interference," he said.

Musgrave walks through the old growth, but he doesn't paint there. Unlike a lot of landscape artists who work on site, or take photographs back to the studio, Musgrave drives or walks through an area and experiences it with all his senses.

"Those real-time, real-life experiences morph themselves into images," he said. "They're not paintings of specific locations" but representations of the total experience.

So what message does he want to leave with viewers of the exhibit?

"The most important thing is to get out and experience nature firsthand," he said. "Immerse yourself in it. It has an effect on your humanity. People around the world are getting further and further disconnected from nature, and in the long run that can affect their judgment on everything."

If Musgrave has his way, maybe a few more people will get their souls stirred.

LEE MUSGRAVE, "bearing"

Where: Nightingale Gallery, Loso Hall, Eastern Oregon University campus

When: through Feb. 7

Gallery hours: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday; noon to 4 p.m. Saturday

Front gallery space installation by Deborah Reichard