Philip Govedare
l
a
n
d
s
c
a
p
e
s
Philip Govedare
l
a
1
n
d
s
c
a
p
e
s
2
3
“The beauty of painting is that it has all of history to refer to
and be informed by…it mines the past in every possible way,”
“My work evolved out of abstraction and as I worked further,
it became clear to me that I was really painting landscape.
At one point, I decided to embrace the subject with all its history,
complexities and layered meanings.”
Excavation #9, oil on canvas, 68” x 60”, 2014
4
“The beauty of painting is that it has all of history to refer to and be informed
importantly, what we don’t know. Although many of his current works take the
ing a narrative, which is revealed for its dependence on partial knowledge of all
Ultimately, Philip Govedare’s recent work is a superbly agile synthesis of global
by…it mines the past in every possible way,” Philip Govedare says.
perspective of aerial views of the Earth’s surface, they are not attempts to depict
kinds—the memory of an old photograph, a glimpse of a man disappearing around
trends from across the arts and a remarkably effective commentary on contem-
an actual place. Instead, the art viewer may be surprised to learn that the view-
a corner, a document filled with statistics, the suddenly remembered sound of
porary visual culture. By incorporating those trends into a personal reworking of
“My work evolved out of abstraction and as I worked further, it became clear
points represented are a “purely invented perspective.”
a waterfall. What becomes unsettlingly clear is that what we understand as the
traditions in American painting, Govedare erodes the commonly held assump-
to me that I was really painting landscape. At one point, I decided to embrace
With no clear real world referent, by working against the viewer’s expectations,
truth of our present moment is as dependent on the suppression of some things
tion that vision is immediate and unflinching—a direct, uncomplicated path to
the subject with all its history, complexities and layered meanings.”
his work begins opening up the space in which we come to understand what
we know as it is on the foregrounding of whatever details come to consciousness
knowledge. By constructing his painted landscapes as documentary fiction, he
pictures tell us. “By creating this kind of a distance between the viewer, which
in that moment. Ristelhueber’s photographic exhibitions work much the same
draws the viewer into his paintings in ways that begin to reveal the processes by
Govedare exercises what has become a profoundly imaginative compositional
is a physical distance of the aerial perspective, just this kind of epic scale of the
way, detailing landscapes with a strangely evanescent quality that refer, only el-
which we see both real landscapes and pictures of them—processes that enact
license: his work now alternates aerial perspectives with ground level views in
painting in terms of what I’m depicting, makes us think, or ponder, or reexam-
liptically, to what we normally suppress in looking at them: the forces that shape
narratives that structure the ways we think about the world and our place in it.
a manipulation of scale and form, detail and structure. These recall the exper-
ine our place in the world,” he says. Unencumbered by the need to reproduce
the places we look at in her photographs of Mostar, Sarajevo, Srebrenica, Beirut.
To put it another way, just because you’ve looked at something doesn’t mean you
iments of well-known contemporary photographers like Sophie Ristelhueber
natural views, Govedare’s work deliberately walks a fine line between the famil-
and Emmett Gowin. Govedare employs these alternating perspectives to picture
iar and unknown, between the taken-for-granted and the strangely disquieting.
wide extents of the Earth’s surface, imagined worlds that result from a blend
“There’s a tension between the depiction that I create and the source of where it
of personal memories and historical knowledge. There are fleeting glimpses
might have been in the world. So, the color that I use is more about light than it
and sustained views as well as remembrances of being present in places, and an
is about literal transcription, and I think then it starts to elicit certain questions.
awareness of what has happened and continues to happen to the environment
The forms in my work could be roads, they could be mining, or they could be
in landscapes from eastern Washington to Utah. Significantly, both Gowin and
caused by natural erosion.”
Ristelhueber are known for depicting devastated landscapes. Govedare’s work is
similar, drawing and painting the kinds of troubled places he can’t get out of his
mind. “I was flying back from southern Oregon, and you look down and it looks
like farmland. There’s a checkerboard pattern from the clear-cutting of the forest,” says Govedare. Things that appear one way from ground level tell a very different story from above. Those aerial views inhabit his consciousness in a way that
change his perspective on what we see while we’re on the ground – what turns
out to be but we usually fail to recognize are only partial views. For him, being in a
place is very meaningful in itself, but it is still only part of a larger picture.
In the same way, Govedare’s paintings produce a sense of unease through the
creation of a carefully manufactured documentary fiction. Similar to both Sebald and Ristelhueber, Govedare uses the translucent qualities of light, the fragile
inscription of lines, the unexpected appearances of color, and the lack of a clear
referent in subject to produce familiar yet strangely unreal scenes that arrest the
viewer’s gaze. In a work like “Melt” for example, the origins of the lines that trace
back delicately into the distance on a high plateau are not clear. Are they natu-
And while painting fictional landscapes may seem like a radical departure from
ral or manmade, more permanent or relatively temporary? Are they scars upon
the Hudson River School, it is very much in line with recent experiments in other
the land? Their indistinct nature is reinforced by the way Govedare causes them to
art forms, from photography to literature. Particularly compelling is a comparison
float above the surface of the paint. While a sense of wholeness and completion in
of Govedare’s work with the writing of W.G. Sebald, who breaches the boundaries
a painting (or a photograph, or an essay) always provides the viewer with a set dis-
between fiction and fact in critically acclaimed works such as The Rings of Sat-
tance—we might say a register—from which to consider, to contemplate, to think
urn, Austerlitz and On the Natural History of Destruction. Haunted by a sense of
about the subject of a scene, partly because it records a temporal stoppage, Gove-
abstract distance, Sebald’s prose seems to refer to subjects only obliquely. Mixed
dare’s paintings have an indistinct quality about them, as if we are viewing it in the
with grainy photographs and documents that often seem placeless or in various
process of unfolding. Representing a kind of imperfect knowledge, these paintings
states of decay, the pages of his books have a ghostly, unsettling quality. Ulti-
put the viewer in the position of recovering and completing what is to be known
It is significant to note that Govedare’s work is similar to well-known artists from
mately, Sebald’s writing brings to the foreground the ways we build and under-
about a scene, a place. “I think what you don’t describe, what you leave open to
other fields who attempt to synthesize experiences of imperfect knowledge. The
stand narratives by anchoring them to details and facts—things we can comfort-
the imagination is a critical part of the painting or drawing” says Govedare. “It’s
irony of course is that, in a world overflowing with information, what arises is
ably locate in the real world. Yet, these details take on a strange impermanence
like poetry: you give a certain amount of essential information but the reader, then
the need to question what we actually know, how we know it, and perhaps most
when we are forced to think about how they work in the service of construct-
brings his own imagination and experience to the work.”
have seen it. Govedare’s art is the kind of work that gets us to look twice, and to
look deeper. It encourages us to see. Perhaps most importantly, it’s the kind of
work that gets us to take that effect with us, out into the street, where we can
once again look with fresh eyes at the world around us.
Jim Ketchum
Jim Ketchum is a geographer and Senior Writer at
Island Press. He co-edited the book,
GeoHumanities: Art, History, Text at the Edge of Place
5
7
6
Mesosphere, oil on canvas, 63” x 74”, 2013
Excavation #7, oil on canvas, 48” x 80”, 2013
9
8
Nebula, oil on canvas, 31” x 54”, 2014
City #2, oil on canvas, 36” x 72”, 2013
11
10
Excavation #4, oil on canvas, 70” x 64”, 2010
Excavation #8, oil on canvas, 66” x 61”, 2014
13
12
Melt, oil on canvas, 66” x 62”, 2012
Excavation #6, oil on canvas, 66” x 59”, 2010
15
14
Excavation #5, oil on canvas, 48” x 90”, 2010
Black Lake, oil on canvas, 50” x 82”, 2011
17
16
Cloud Series #5, oil on paper, 11” x 12 ½”, 2013
Cloud Series #6, oil on paper, 9” x 12”, 2013
Cloud Series #7, oil on paper, 7½” x 12”, 2013
Cloud Series #8, oil on paper, 9” x 12”, 2013
Cloud Series #9, oil on paper, 11” x 15”, 2013
19
18
Burn, ink on paper, 12” x 18”, 2007
Burn #2, ink on paper, 15” x 11”, 2013
31 Canyon, ink on paper, 12” x 18”, 2007
21
20
Circo Massimo, ink on paper, 12” x 18”, 2007
Colosseo, ink on paper, 12” x 18”, 2007
23
22
Creek, ink on paper, 12” x 18”, 2007
Inlet, ink on paper, 15” x 11”, 2012
River, ink on paper, 12” x 19”, 2013
25
24
Summer Bluff, ink on paper, 12” x 18”, 2011
Emigrant Lake, watercolor on paper, 11” x 15”, 2011
27
26
Excavation, oil on canvas, 60” x 55”, 2008
Flood, oil on canvas, 59” x 56”, 2009
Interview – 10/20/2013
JK: Can you tell me how you approach painting? What’s your creative process both in a
putting-paint-to-canvas sense and a broad
conceptual sense?
28
PG: Well, first of all, I work on the larger
paintings for months. It could be a year
or more. And I do work on more than one
painting at a time. The reason for that is I
like to be able to get away from the experience for a time. Unlike a lot of painters,
I don’t typically leave my paintings facing
outward in the studio. I turn them to the
wall and I would like, ideally, to be able to
come in and see what I’ve done previously and see it somehow with a fresh eye.
Everyone has these personal idiosyncrasies
and that’s one of mine. When I envision
some kind of landscape, I don’t have a
clear idea of what I want to paint, I just
have a general sense of scale, an orientation in terms of horizon line, maybe…
maybe a condition of light or time of day
or geographic location, but really it’s
very open. In that way I kind of stumble
through the process. Painting is a very
inefficient process for me, but it’s the only
way that I can arrive at something that
feels fresh, surprising and unfamiliar. I was
influenced very much by the processes and
approaches of the abstract expressionist
painters – just the idea of the painting
being an existential encounter, that the
whole process was an act of self-discovery, and I think that’s something original
in American painting starting maybe as
far back as Albert Ryder or even George
Inness. My process is one of observation in
the real world as a starting point, and then
engagement with process and material to
find imagery that arrives at a place that I
would not have anticipated and that’s kind
of a surprise to me – an intersection of reality and imagination that has a compelling
presence, both familiar and strange at the
same time.
Albert Ryder is an artist whose work
interests me because of the content of his
work–a solitary figure out on a boat in the
ocean. And that appeals to me, too – this
relationship of the individual to nature or
place in the universe, but also his way of
working, his very unorthodox way of combining materials and processes. A lot of his
paintings over time, even in his lifetime,
were damaged and they cracked, but in
interesting ways. They were organic, kind
of living things.
My own work evolved out of abstraction that was grounded in a reference to
landscape. And then as I worked further,
it became clear to me that I was really
painting landscape. I went back out and
I found this site, the Duwamish River, in
south Seattle. A superfund site that has a
history of dredging and heavy industry, it
was also an Indian fishing ground and village, so it was loaded with this history but
also with this mix of nature and industry.
I went down there and I started doing a lot
of drawing, and I ended up doing a series
of paintings. After I finished that series of
Duwamish paintings, I went back to a kind
of abstraction in the aerial landscapes, but I
didn’t leave observation. I recently started
a series of cloud studies, which are partly
observed and part imagination. One thing
that really interests me is the intersection
of observation, memory, and imagination. For example, the paintings that I do
are clearly informed by being in a place,
observing certain phenomena, but not
being limited to that. I recently told some
of my students that I was doing some cloud
studies. I said, “You know, the cool thing is
you go out there and you might have a really dramatic configuration and you’ll start
painting and look up 5 minutes later and
it’s gone (laughter) – you can’t capture it,
so how do you capture the essence of what
it is? – so, back to influence – from abstract
expressionism as kind of a starting point –
Turner, for example – the phenomenon of
weather – the idea that the weather in his
paintings is based on observation but also
really an invention. He’s taking things that
he’s observed and he’s putting them into
his world so that they become dramatic,
otherworldly and visionary. Also in Turner
– and this goes back to the Hudson River
painters – is the notion of the epic scale of
the landscape in relation to the individual
– how we become miniscule in relation to
the world that’s being depicted.
People ask me, “Do you paint from a
photograph?” and they often assume that.
Or, “Do you paint from an airplane?”
“Are you using satellite photos?” And the
answer is no. I take photos because I want
to remember a place in terms of what was
there, but I don’t ever use a photograph
as a template or work by looking back and
referring to a photograph directly, and I
don’t use satellite imagery, but what I do
is manipulate perspective to create that
aerial view, that distance, and it’s a purely
invented perspective.
JK: Is one of the things you’re getting from that
photograph is the emotion of a place?
PG: Not so much the emotion because I feel
like I’ve internalized the emotion by being
there and doing studies from observation.
There is a tension from the depiction that I
create and where it might be in the world.
So the color I use is more about light than
it is about literal transcription, and I think
then its starts to elicit certain questions.
The forms in my work, the scars and the
roads etched into the land could be man
made, they could be mining or they could
be natural erosion but the thing about
drawing is that’s it’s not really just a transcription, it’s highly selective. There’s so
much information in the world that when
you draw, it’s very different from photography. It’s picking out certain important
things, and it’s also engaging the imagination. I think what you don’t describe, what
you leave open to the imagination becomes
part of a drawing but also part of the painting, too. It’s like poetry: you give a certain
amount of essential information, but the
reader, then, brings his own experience
to the work and then things sort of take off.
JK: People like Robert Motherwell, for example,
were interested in exploring the emotional
content of a line. Is that part of how you see
your experience of creating a painting?
PG: A line definitely has a character to it.
Lines, for one thing can really structure
space. They zigzag back, in terms of my
aerial views, and lines, on their own terms
can be very delicate and elegant, almost
fragile when seen from a distance. So, I
guess in some ways I am interested in the
old-fashioned notion of beauty and transcendence. That links me with the whole
tradition of painters up through modernism. For example, when you play music
there has to be some sort of gratification
or some sense of being transported – and
that’s hard to explain – but it’s sort of a felt
relationship to the material and the making of something. I studied music for a time
in college, but I never listened to music
early on when I painted because I thought
it was too emotional and kind of distracting, and I don’t want to be sentimental or
anything like that. But I started listening to
Italian opera in the last few years. Its very
melodramatic, and the story can be silly.
But the music makes it all make sense on a
much deeper level.
JK: Since we’re talking about opera, and
drama, let me ask you a related question. In
drama of course, there’s always a tension
that’s being set up. Is there a tension in your
paintings that you’re deliberately setting up?
PG: Well, there’s a tension between the
depiction that I create and the source of
where it might have been in the world.
So, the colors that I use are not literal.
I use color as a kind of light but also as
an abstraction to create a feeling. When
every painting is green in the landscape,
and then the sky is blue, there’s a kind
of familiarity to it, but I flip those things
around, and color becomes more about
light than it is about a literal transcription, and I think then it starts to elicit
certain questions. The forms in my work
could be could be natural or they could
be part of road building, they could be
mining, they could be the result of natural
erosion – those kinds of questions, the
kind of tensions that those things bring
up are definitely a part of what my work
is about. “What is this?” “Who are we?”
“What is our place in the world?” I think
by creating this kind of a distance between
the viewer, which is a physical distance of
the aerial perspective, just this kind of epic
scale of the painting in terms of what I’m
depicting, makes us think, or ponder, or
re-examine our place in the world. “Are
we a part of nature?” How do we fit into
the scheme of things?” Those are basic
questions, and nothing original to me, but
it’s something I definitely think about.
I’ve just been reading the book Endurance about the Shackleton expedition. It’s
fascinating. Traveling in those little boats
or camping on ice for more than a year in
freezing weather on these little floating
islands. And then there is no sign of anything man-made, and it’s forbidding and
yet it’s beautiful – anyway, that’s something that’s very appealing to me. And I
think those austere landscapes of southern
Utah or the canyonlands have that same
kind of austerity that is both beautiful
and forbidding. It goes back to the whole
notion of wilderness too – of something
that’s inhospitable, even terrifying on
some level – and then our imprint on that
plays into that whole question of “What is
wilderness?” or “What is our role in nature?” “What has culture, technology and
consumerism done to reshape our place in
the natural world?”
JK: In some of your more industrial paintings,
you can’t necessarily see it but you know
there’s a lot of action going on – pollution
and environmental damage and degradation,
you’re also inscribing another type of terror
into the landscape. Is that right?
PG: Sarah Luria has called it the “toxic
sublime.” That’s a little over the top in
terms of the way I’d characterize most
of my work, but in the extreme there is
something like that when you look at the
devastation on the tar sands in Canada.
I did do a painting “Sands” – actually,
that’s a painting I had in the gallery and I
brought back to the studio…I just didn’t
like it, and I thought “I’m going to repaint
this,” and I started to try and fix it, and it
was just dying a slow death, and I thought,
“You know what? I’m just going to tear
into this thing.” I had been looking at those
images of tar sands. And I thought, “I can
envision this. I know what this looks like.”
And I started just pushing paint across the
painting like a bulldozer and reconfiguring
the land, and using these kind of earthy,
bloody colors, plowing through, and that’s
what came out of that. I would say (that
painting) is really one of the landscapes
that has been more radically reconfigured.
For me that is a terrifying place.
Emmett Gowin is a very interesting photographer and he did these photographs of
the Northwest, and also of Nevada bomb
test sites and the Hanford nuclear site, and
he did Umatilla, OR, the weapons disposal
site – and they’re all back-and-white.
There’s also a strip mine called “The Black
Triangle” in Czechoslovakia and it has one
of the highest cancer rates in the world.
It’s sort of a throwaway landscape – once
you get the coal out and you’ve ripped up
the Earth, you could probably go in and at
great expense cover it up, you know, but
essentially the attitude is that the Earth is a
disposable resource.
JK: When you’re working on a painting, how
conscious are you of the audience or the viewer? How aware are you of all the elements and
how they’re going to work for somebody else?
PG: Honestly, I don’t think about that. I
know that might sound strange. I kind of
have this mythical audience that I’m painting to, and when it arrives at a point for me
– and I’m obviously the person making the
determination of when it’s finished – but
for me, there a sense that it transcends my
expectations and my understanding and
creates a sense of strangeness, an unfamiliarity, as if almost someone else authored
it. I really want to paint myself out of the
painting. It’s not about me. I want it to be
universal. Yet, I think that if I arrive at that
point where it kind of has a life of its own
– its own personality and a presence that
is really compelling – I think then that the
audience, a certain audience will be there
for it.
JK: It appears that you’re interested in placing
yourself in a particular kind of relation to your
materials; that you have to reach a certain
sense of yourself in order to proceed with the
act of painting, is that true? Or is it that doing
the work puts you into that mindset?
PG: Yes, I think it’s clearly the latter. Going
into the studio, you can’t ever predict the
day something good is going to happen.
I work in the mornings, and I’m casting about, and something comes out of
it usually when I least expect it. There is
intention, but there is also risk. And I think
art at its best, on some level embodies that.
Painting somehow stimulates the imagination to bring us to a greater understanding.
JK: Is there something about living in the
Northwest in a certain cultural milieu that
influences your thinking or your work?
PG: Obviously, Seattle is a very “green”
city and the University of Washington has
a strong environmental profile, so I think
there’s a kind of environmental consciousness here. I’ve had interactions here with
a lot of colleagues with similar interests.
So, I think in that sense it’s created a fertile
environment for my thinking. But also
because of the physical environment here –
just the other day I was going through the
Cascade Mountains – and because of that
you’re reminded in a way that you might
not be if you were living in other places. I
was flying back from southern Oregon recently, and looking down and it looks like
farmland. There’s a checkerboard pattern
from the clear-cutting of the forest. And
then there are the things that we may see
directly like the affects of climate change. A
forest that is diseased may have a different
color from above, and be strangely alluring
seen from a distance. But this is something
that’s constantly in my mind.
JK: What is your relationship to environmental
art?
PG: I respect people who call themselves
environmental artists, but I don’t consider
myself one of them. I don’t say, okay, I’m
going to depict this devastated landscape.
I would like my paintings to be more of a
question mark than a declaration of some
kind of position. And I guess I’m within
this American tradition that celebrates
beauty in the landscape, which may
sound contradictory. If you go back to the
Hudson River School, they had this idea of
the sacred in nature. I’m not a particularly
religious person, but I do think on some
level painting is a spiritual pursuit; even
in Rothko there is something mystical and
reverential, and I do see my work that
way but configured around landscape. I
mean, there’s almost a sense of grief and
desperation in Rothko’s late paintings, but
also beauty in the paintings near the end of
his life. If my paintings impart a feeling of
joy, wonder or exhilaration – or something
unsettling or disturbing, that’s fine – I
don’t really have a specific narrative of
guilt or condemnation or reproval that I
want to impart. But if people come to these
and they say, “Oh God, this really makes
me think of strip mining” and, you know,
whatever…whatever they think is fine.
JK: You just started getting interested in geography in the past six or seven years?
PG: Yeah, you know it was always there
in a way that I hadn’t ever realized, and I
must say that the Geography and Humanities Symposium at the University
of Virginia where we met was wonderful
in that so many different people from so
many different areas came together. I think
just the interconnections between different
disciplines and how they map human activity in relation to the physical landscape
made me start thinking a little bit more
broadly about our place in the world.
Jim Ketchum
Jim Ketchum is a geographer and Senior Writer at
Island Press. He co-edited the book,
GeoHumanities: Art, History, Text at the Edge of Place
29
31
30
Trails, oil on canvas, 24” x 57”, 2006
Excavation #3, oil on canvas, 44” x 78”, 2010
Tundra, oil on canvas, 19” x 80”, 2010
35
34
Sands, oil on canvas, 52” x 41”, 2013
Project #3, oil on canvas, 59” x 56”, 2011
37
36
Excavation #2, oil on canvas, 63” x 55”, 2009
Project, oil on canvas, 47” x 65”, 2009
39
38
Squall, oil on canvas, 47” x 47”, 2010
Squall, oil on canvas, 52” x 55”, 2011
Education
1984
1980
Selected Group Exhibitions
MFA, Tyler School of Art/Temple University, Philadelphia, PA
BFA, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA
Academic Position
Professor, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
Awards and Grants
40
2012
2010
2009
2008
2007
2003-6 2003
1993-4
1994
1991
1988
1987
1983-4 1972-3
Milliman Award for Association of American Geographers Presentation, New York
Milliman Award for AAG Presentation and Exhibition, Seattle
RRF Scholar Grant (U.W.) for Prehistoric and Post-Apocalyptic Landscape
NEA grant for Northwest Art/ Northwest Environment Exhibition collaboration
Milliman Award for exhibition catalog for solo show at Francine Seders Gallery
Freimuth Travel Award for AAG symposium at the University of Virginia
Jack and Grace Pruzan Faculty Fellowship, University of Washington
Royalty Research Fund (U. W.), RRF Scholar Grant for “Duwamish Series”
National Endowment for the Arts, Visual Artist Fellowship Grant, Washington DC
Graduate School Research Fund, Summer Award
The Pollack-Krasner Foundation, New York, Grant in Painting, February
Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Fellowship in Visual Arts, Full Award
Tobeleah Wecschler Annual Award, Annual Awards Painting Exhibition
Cheltenham Art Center, Cheltenham, PA
Russell Conwell Fellowship, Temple University
Honor Student Scholarship, College of Idaho
Solo Exhibitions
2013
2011
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2002
2001
2000
1997
1996
1995
1994
1992
1991
1988
1984
City, oil on canvas, 37” x 72”, 2011
Distant Places, Francine Seders Gallery, Seattle, WA (two-person)
Francine Seders Gallery, Seattle, WA
Francine Seders Gallery, Seattle, WA
Pierce College Art Gallery, Lakewood, WA
Hampshire College, Amherst, MA
Davis and Cline Gallery, Ashland OR
Associazione Culturale Il Granarone, Calcata, Italy
Francine Seders Gallery, Paintings from the Duwamish, Outside Time and Place
Bickett Gallery, “Places: Seen and Remembered”, Raleigh, NC.
The Painting Center, New York
Recent Paintings, Francine Seders Gallery, Seattle
Paintings, Pierce College, Lakewood, WA
Outside In, Works on Paper, Francine Seders
Francine Seders Gallery, Seattle
d. p. Fong Galleries, San Jose, CA
Francine Seders Gallery, Seattle
Francine Seders Gallery, Seattle
Paul Cava Gallery, Philadelphia
The Untitled Gallery, San Francisco, July
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Morris Gallery
Paul Cava Gallery, Philadelphia
La Galleria Temple, Rome, Italy
2013
2012
2011
2010/11
2010
2009/10
2009
2008
2007
2006
2006
2005
2002
2001
2000
1999 1998
1997
1996
1994
1993
1992
1991
1990
1989
1988
1987
1986
Koplin del Rio Gallery, Los Angeles, I-5 Connects
Bellevue College, Bellevue, WA, Gallery Space, artists from Prographica Gallery
Francine Seders Gallery, Gallery Artists, Seattle, WA
Prographica Fine Works on Paper, Seattle, Commentaries: Artists respond to the Land
Prographica Fine Works on Paper, Seattle, “Landscape Part II: Urban and Rural”
Pritchard Art Gallery, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID. Uncommon River
Prographica Fine Works on Paper, Seattle
Critical Messages: Contemporary Northwest Artists on the Environment
Western Gallery, Western Washington University, Bellingham
Hallie Ford Museum, August-October, Willamette University, Salem, Oregon
Boise Art Museum, ID
Prographica Fine Works on Paper Gallery, Inaugural exhibition, Seattle
Francine Seders Gallery, Seattle
Museum of Northwest Art, La Conner, Representing Abstraction
Evergreen State College, Landscape Visions
Jenkins Johnson Gallery, New York, On Paper
Koplin del Rio Gallery, Los Angeles, Drawings VIII: West Coast Drawings
Francine Seders Gallery, Seattle, Works on Paper
University of Virginia, Geography and Humanities Symposium Exhibition
Seattle Municipal Tower Gallery Space, “Structure: Art Inspired by the Built Environment” City of Seattle, Recent Purchases
The Rainier Club, selected gallery artists for Seders Gallery, Seattle
Seattle Academy of the Fine Arts, UW Painting faculty
Davis & Cline Gallery, Ashland. OR
Francine Seders Gallery. New… Idea Material Process
Cancer Lifeline, Seattle, WA
Francine Seders 35-year Anniversary Exhibition. (Seders private collection)
The Painting Center, Winter Show, New York
Francine Seders Gallery, En Plein Air
Francine Seders Gallery, Seattle, Painting and Sculpture
Rome Selection, Temple Gallery, Philadelphia, P.A.
Drawings by Gallery Artists, Francine Seders Gallery, Seattle
Davis/McClain Gallery, Gallery Artists, Houston, TX
Mostra dei Docenti Temple University Rome Gallery
Francine Seders Gallery, Four Abstract Painters, Seattle
Paul Cava Gallery, Philadelphia
Paul Cava Gallery, Philadelphia
University of Washington, School of Art Gallery, Visiting Artist Exhibition
Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, David Hammons
Performance Collaboration, “Higher Goals.”
Paul Cava Gallery, Inaugural Exhibition
Tyler School of Art in Rome, Americans in Rome
Carnegie Mellon Art Gallery, Pittsburgh, Perspectives from Pennsylvania
Johnstown Art Museum, Johnstown, PA; Blair Art Museum, Hollidaysburg, PA
(Show of 1988 recipients of Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship)
“Philadelphia Fellowships, Levy Gallery for the Arts (Moore College of Art)
Paul Cava Gallery, Philadelphia, April
Paul Cava Gallery, Philadelphia, Drawings
Mellon Bank, Founders’ Suite. Fleisher Art Memorial Challenge Exhibition Finalists
Annual Awards Painting Exhibition, Cheltenham PA Art Center
Paul Cava Gallery, Philadelphia, Works on Paper by selected artists
41
Visiting Artist/ Lectures/Panels/Residency
2013
Introduction to my work, University of Washington, Northwest
Regional Conference in the Environmental Humanities:
“The Future of the Environmental Humanities: Research,
Pedagogies, Institutions, and Publics”, Nov. 3
42
University of Idaho, Moscow, Visiting Artist Lecture in
conjunction with Pritchard Art Gallery exhibition Uncommon
River, April
2012
Association of American Geographers paper presentation,
“Evolving Interpretations of Wilderness”, New York, February
2011
Association of American Geographers paper presentation,
“Art and the Politics of Landscape”, April
2009
Representing Abstraction, Museum of Northwest Art, panel
discussion, October
2007
Guest Artist/Critic, Temple University Rome, December
Public lecture “Altered Landscapes”, UW Rome Center,
December
Geography and Humanities Symposium, University of Virginia
and Monticello, paper presentation “Altered Landscapes”,
Sponsored by the Association of American Geographers, U. VA,
and the American Council of Learned Societies, June
Center for Land Use Interpretation, Invited to use Wendover, UT
residency facilities for a week in May
2004
Discussion, CAA Seattle, Feb.
Artist Lecture, Western Washington University, Bellingham,
February
2002
Panel Discussion, Francine Seders Gallery,
“New… Idea, Material Process” Francine Seders Gallery, August
University of Oregon, Visiting Artist
1994
Tyler School of Art in Rome, Guest Artist/Critic, November
1992
University of Oregon, Eugene, Visiting Artist, December 3
1991
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, March
University of Washington, Seattle, “Tyler Abroad: Rome... A
Studio Experience.” Slide lecture & graduate critique, February
1990
Rhode Island School of Design, European Honors Program in
Rome, Guest Artist/Critic April,
1986
Moore College of Art, Philadelphia, November
Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, March
Selected Bibliography
2012
School of Art Newsletter, Geography and Art, October 2
http://art.washington.edu/news-events/newsletters/oct2012-art-nature/
Moscow-Pullman Daily News, “An imaginary world of rivers
and industry, Philip Govedare’s landscape paintings featured in
Prichard Art Gallery”, March 22
SHFT The Culture of Today’s Environment, Aerial Landscapes
by Philip Govedare, January 4, http://www.shft.com/reading/
aerial-landscapes-by-philip-govedare/
2011
Crosscut.com, Spectacular Questions: the Paintings of Philip
Govedare, June 1
http://crosscut.com/2011/06/01/arts/20963/
Spectacular-questions:-The-paintings-of-Philip-Govedare/
NY Times Opinion Page, Opinionator, The Triumph of the
Humanities, Stanley Fish’s blog reviews
Geohumanities: Art, History, Text at the Edge of Place, June 13
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/13/the-triumph-of-the-humanities/.
Geography interacting with Humanities, AAG Annals, flagship
journal for the Association of American Geographers,
Geohumanities: Art, History, Text at the Edge of Place,
http://www.aag.org/galleries/newsletter-files/Nov_NL_2010_
REVISED.pdf
Geohumanities: Art, History, Text at the Edge of Place, my essay
“Altered Landscapes” and painting reproduced in a book
published by Routledge for the Association of American
Geographers, April
2006
Hampshire College, Amherst, MA, Visiting Artist, September
The Boise Weekly, Beauty and the Beast: Northwest
Environmental Art at BAM
University of Washington Environmental Program,
Panel Discussion, “Artists Eyes:
Revealing the Power of Nature’s Inspiration, April
Northwest artists gather for Critical Messages, by Christopher
Schnoor, February 11
“Art as Social Document”, Panel Discussion, Sponsored by the
UW photography program, February
2005
Temple University Rome, Visiting Artist Lecture, September
Olympic College, Bremerton, WA April
Chair, “Nature in Crisis: Landscape in the 21st Century”, Panel
2010
The Boise Weekly, Critical Messages, by Josh Gross, review of
group exhibition Critical Messages: Contemporary Northwest
Artists on the Environment, December 15
Crosscut.com, Northwest Artists Wrestle with Environmental
Threats, by Bill Simmons, review of Critical Messages:
Contemporary Northwest Artists on the Environment, May 11
Critical Messages: Contemporary Northwest Artists on the
Environment, catalog with essay by William Dietrich
2009
Seattle Times, Abstract, Representational combine in satisfying
show in La Conner, by Nancy Worssam, “Representing
Abstraction” at the Museum of Northwest Art, October 30
West Coast Drawings: Drawings VIII catalog, Koplin Del Rio Gallery,
Los Angeles, by Alison Gibson, September
2008
From Above, solo exhibition (Francine Seders Gallery) catalog and
essay by poet David Rigsbee, May
2006
The Valley Advocate, Amherst, MA, “Unedited Landscape”,
September 28
Daily Hampshire Gazette, Amherst, MA, “Painter Depicts
Landscapes Laid Waste by Humanity”, September 19
2005
Civita Castellana, In Mostra I Quadri di Govedare, August
2004
The Seattle Weekly “Visual Arts Pick”, Review of solo show,
“Duwamish Series. Outside Time and Place” by Andrew Engelson,
October 20-26
The Stranger, Liminal Landscapes, Known and Unknown Worlds,
(review of solo exhibition at Francine Seders Gallery by Katie
Kurtz), October 14
Duwamish Series, Outside Time and Place, catalog essay by
Charles D’Ambrosio
1991
Philadelphia Inquirer, review of solo exhibition at Pennsylvania
Academy of Fine Arts Morris Gallery, February 17
1989
New Art Examiner, review of “Perspectives from Pennsylvania,” Carnegie Mellon Gallery Pittsburgh (drawing reproduced),
November
Hard Choices, Just Rewards, catalog for traveling exhibition
of Pennsylvania, Carnegie Mellon Gallery, Pittsburgh (drawing
reproduced), November
Philadelphia Inquirer, review Cava Gallery Group Show, April
1988
Philadelphia Inquirer, “Govedare’s Abstract Art,” review of
one-person show at Cava Gallery March
1987
Philadelphia Inquirer, review of Cheltenham Annual Awards
Exhibition, Philadelphia, March
1986
Philadelphia Inquirer, review of Cava Gallery Works on Paper
Show, June
Selected Collections
Coventry Financial, Philadelphia 2008
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, review of panel presentations
(Landscape: Nature in Crisis) at CAA conference, February
Russell Investment Group, New York Office 2006
NYFA Current. Article on “Nature in Crisis: Landscape in the 21st
Century” panel. Discussion
Harborview Medical Center, Seattle, WA 2005
1999
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, “Like a Breath of Fresh Air”, review of
En Plein Air, Francine Seders Gallery
The Gloston Associates, Seattle, WA, 2004
1997
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, “Modernist Says Much Without Saying
a Word,” Nov. 14
1995
Seattle Times, review of solo exhibition at Francine Seders Gallery,
May 11
1992
Philadelphia Inquirer, review of solo exhibition at Paul Cava
Gallery, Philadelphia, May 28
Seattle Public Utilities Portable Works Collection 2005
Dean Standish Perkins & Associates, Seattle, WA 2004
University Club, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 2004
Zevenbergen Capital, Seattle, WA, 2000
Washington State’s Art in Public Places Program, Kent School
District Portable Collection 1995
Federal Reserve Bank, Philadelphia, PA, 1989
Prudential Insurance Company, Philadelphia, PA, 1988
43
44
Wetlands, ink on paper, 18” x 12”, 2008