Portrait of the artist (plus dog)
Story & photos by Gretchen Ammerman
Oregon Coast TODAY
Marilyn Burkhardt is a beautiful person. But for the self-portraits she has painted throughout the past 50 years for her current show, running through the end of October at the Burkhardt Gallery in Cloverdale, she makes no attempt to sugarcoat what she sees in the mirror.
The works in the show are raw, honest portraits of the artist, “warts and all,” rendered in an impressive variety of media including etching, watercolor, lithography, oil painting, charcoal and bronze casting.
“Art is not about making yourself look good,” she said. “The reactions to my latest self-portrait have been interesting. I’ve had people say ‘you are better looking than that’ but what I’m doing with my self-portraits is just trying to show who I am with no judgment and hopefully, in the process, revealing something intangible. They are more about capturing the mood or the energy of the moment.”
Judge for yourself at the artist reception at the gallery this Saturday, Sept. 16, from 1 to 4 pm.
“The reception will not be an extravagant affair, but it will be intimate and we will be serving vegan treats.”
Forgoing animal protein is a choice that aligns with Burkhardt’s deep love of nature, the theme that forms the second leg of the three-legged stool of her work, showing up in the form of horses, bears, wolves and whales.
“I used to do a lot of self-portraits because that was the subject I had available,” she said. “I did a print series of some of the smallest things in nature, like leaves, but animals truly captured me. Once I figured out what my subject matter was, it was about emphasizing what resonates for me with wild nature, what makes animals in the wild beautiful and why I believe they are worth preserving and worthy of respect.”
Like very many young girls, Burkhardt grew up loving horses.
“My mother said I would grow out of it but I never did,” she said. “I still think they are the most beautiful animals and symbolic of freedom, too.”
Loosely quoting Eckhart Tolle, Bukhardt introduced the third leg of her artistic subjects, her beloved pit bull dogs.
“Dogs are so much more calming to be around,” she said, “because they don’t have an ego and they are not judging you.”
Her pittie friends show up in her paintings, her sculptures and even in her book, “Brutus goes to the Beach.”
“I rescued Brutus from my neighbors who were totally neglecting him,” she said. “I used to turn down jobs because I didn’t want to leave him, he was my best friend.”
Brutus even accompanied Burkhardt while she studied art at the University of Oregon.
“I used to bring him to classes with me until someone complained,” she said. “That's one of the reasons I moved to the coast.”
Burkhardt moved to the area in the late 1980s. She and Martin Anderson opened a small gallery in the former milkhouse of his barn and named it Bellwether Gallery, because of a small herd of sheep and goats that lived there. She later opened a gallery for a couple of years in Pacific City, also named Burkhardt Gallery.
The current Burkhardt Gallery opened in Cloverdale in 2014, shortly after she painted a mural depicting dairy cows and other animals on the side of the building. Cloverdale, a former dairy town, has undergone a renewal in recent years with the opening of art galleries, an antique and Turkish rug store and other specialty shops.
Burkhardt has cut down on the number of days she spends at the gallery, enjoying the peace she finds at the home she has made on property surrounded by forest and being with her current best friend, a black and white pit bull that looks, if you squint, a bit like a tiny dairy cow.
The Burkhardt Gallery is located at 34395 Hwy. 101 in Cloverdale and is open Thursday through Sunday from 11 am to 4 pm. For more information, call 503-812-9866.