Seven abstract geometric paintings by Portland artist Michael Knutson find a home in the Knight Campus thanks to a gift by the retiring Reed College professor
The geometric oil paintings of Portland artist Michael Knutson have been described as spider webs floating in midair, exuding a brilliantly scrappy energy. That brightly colored motion and intensity is now on display in the Knight Campus, thanks to a donation from Knutson, who is retiring and closing his art studio after serving as a professor of art at Reed College in Portland since 1982.
The paintings are part of a long-term installation at the UO. The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art (JSMA) also received one of Knutson’s works to be installed in its collection. The UO joins the ranks of Microsoft, Oregon Health & Science University, the Portland Art Museum and numerous other public institutions and public spaces across the Pacific Northwest that house Knutson’s work in their collections.
Born in Everett, Wash., Knutson has enjoyed an illustrious career as an artist and an academic. After earning a bachelor’s of fine art, magna cum laude, from the University of Washington in 1972 and a master’s of fine art from Yale University in 1975, he received the National Endowment for the Arts’ Individual Artist Grant in 1982, won the Oregon Biennial Juror’s Award at the Portland Art Museum in both 1985 and 1999 and received the American Academy of Arts & Letters’ Purchase Award in 2010. He has continued to host group and solo exhibitions throughout his career with his work represented at Blackfish Gallery in Portland and Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle.
Knutson’s canvases often feature repeating shapes and bold color choices, and even as he has been compared with modernist painters such as Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollack, and Alfred Jensen, he says his work has clear affinities with carpets of the Islamic world, Navajo blankets and Amish and African-American quilts.
Knutson’s large-scale paintings in the Knight Campus stem from different periods in his career and can be seen in the basement and first and second levels. They include “Current” (1990), a grand painting with overlapping circular shapes located on the west side of level two; “Gothic Sea” (1994) and “Honeycomb” (1997), a pair of colorful pieces filled with primary colors in the sitting area outside of the Beetham Family Seminar Room; and “Bipolar Coils II” (2008), an intricately patterned study of triangular shapes flowing across a wall-sized canvas adjacent to the Clean Room in the basement level that is visible from level one.
The installation of Knutson’s art is in keeping with the Knight Campus’ ongoing commitment to art and culture, along with science and innovation. The campus previously collaborated on the Center for Art Research Project Incubator Program, a joint initiative between the Knight Campus and the College of Design funded by the Ford Family Foundation that brought together artists and scientists in the name of creativity and experimentation.
— July 27, 2023
Header Image: Portland artist Michael Knutson's 2008 work “Bipolar Coils II” (2008), hangs on the north wall of the Knight Campus basement level adjacent to the Clean Room.