Evan Rumble, Washougal High School art teacher, was selected as a featured artist at the Maryhill Museum of Art “Teachers as Artists: Washington Arts Educators” exhibit. His piece, “Shattered Sandstone, Table Rock, ID, 2017” is an acrylic on aluminum composite panel.
Teachers as Artists is a juried exhibition in the MJ Murdock Charitable Trust Education Center showcasing the state-wide talents of Washington’s arts educators. The exhibit acknowledges that art teachers work long and hard to bring out the best in their students, often at the expense of their own creative pursuits.
In an artist statement, Rumble said while in his second year of teaching high school he struggled to carve out time to work on his own practice, but also felt responsible to be overcoming the same creative demands that he regularly ask of his students. “Painting in this manner allows me to break the project down to fit my schedule, a few shapes a day, and still strengthen my own artistic problem solving,” he explained.
Rumble began hardedge abstraction techniques in his painting while still in art school. “Painting like this allows me to impose a series of “rules” and to be very process-oriented when it comes to dealing with visual problems,” he said. “Rule #1: one line, one value, and only one tool.”
The subject of his painting was pulled from a black and white photograph taken of a large boulder, about 12 feet high, located just off a trail on Table Rock, a popular hiking destination for Boise, ID residents. “The cleavage of the sandstone seemed like an interesting dynamic to explore with shapes while the limitations of a gray-scale palette could be fun to push. I like to use a variety of brushes, tools, and mediums to experiment with stroke and texture,” he said.
The Teachers as Artists exhibit runs through April 26, 2017 at Maryhill Museum of Art, 35 Maryhill Museum Drive, Goldendale, WA 98682. For more information go to www.maryhillmuseum.org.
