James Lavadour
James Lavadour
Walla Walla, born 1951
[Alejo Benedetti, For Consideration, Art Committee November 2021]
Person TypeIndividual
Terms
BiographyThe natural world has always played a significant role in James Lavadour’s life. Growing up on the Umatilla Reservation near Pendleton, Oregon, the landscape of the Blue Mountains was an ever-present source of inspiration, wonder, and discovery. Lavadour never finished high school or received any formal advanced art education, but the self-taught artist expressed an interest in art making from an early age and found ways to educate himself in part by voraciously consuming every art book he could get his hands on. Some of Lavadour’s earliest works in the 70s and 80s leaned towards more figural work and sampled very directly from modern artists whose work he admired. However, starting in the 90s, Lavadour’s deep love of hiking and engaging with nature led to his more recognizable, multi-panel landscape work. This eventually gave way to his mature practice around 2000, which blends abstraction with landscape and has sustained his focus for the past two decades.
[Alejo Benedetti, For Consideration, Art Committee November 2021]
