Gorge Arts & Humanities

Artist Profile: Chad Mayo’s “Birds of Paradise”

By Tomi Owens, 4-12-06

Spring has sprung on the Columbia Gorge art scene. The weather for Hood River's April First Friday art walk was indisputably perfect: cool, windless, serene. Downtown was delightfully un-crowded. The tourist day-trippers have not yet begun to arrive and many of the locals were saving themselves for the big see and be seen to-do on Saturday Night, Bite of the Gorge. Yet, feral bands of HRV teenagers roamed Oak Street, coalescing and breaking apart like foam in the surf. And, as usual in the Gorge, art lovers were spoiled for choice. We were free to flit from gallery to pub to coffee shop to admire local talent. That is how I came across Chad Mayo's solo exhibit "Birds of Paradise" at Jeans@110 on 5th, where the artist did more than flit about. He soared.

Chad Mayo's work has been solo exhibited the length and breadth of the Northwest: Seattle to San Francisco, Lincoln City to The Dalles. He has been featured on OPB's Oregon Art Beat and has participated in over a dozen group exhibitions. For the next month his paintings will be on display at Jeans.

If you'll pardon the blatant art speak, Jeans is either a coffee shop that thinks it's a gallery or a gallery that thinks it's a coffee shop. According to Mayo "Jeans is an ideal space to show because of the lighting, the attitude, and the coffee." On Friday, Jean distributed divine (and free) macaroons with generous lattes to boot.

Mayo named this collection satirically. "When people think of birds of paradise they think of the tropics, but for me, its closer to home."

Mayo was born and raised in Eastern Washington surrounded by the natural beauty of the Columbia Gorge and he graduated from the Art Institute of Seattle.

"I don't open the Audubon Field Guide and replicate an actual species of bird. I paint the archetypal, the spiritual. The open, vast spaces of my home have been a source of insight and inspiration to me," he says.

In his "May the Wind Blow Your Troubles Away,"  a blue bird, or rather a bluebird woman, stands poised beneath a shimmering solar orb. Just as the glowing disc of the sun parts the storm clouds, the bird woman's feathery robe is parted to reveal the feminine form beneath.

"Adoption Bundle," a darker, more portentous interpretation, exposes and uproots a blackbird which is divided spiritually between two ghostly apparitions vaguely present in the shadowy background. In all the paintings in this collection Mayo's craftmanship is intricate and detailed but over and over again he tackles concepts that are elemental and universal.

But I, a writer, have decided not to spoil it for you, the viewer. By far, the most impressive pieces aren't shown here. Why ruin the sense of awe, the solemn grandeur that Chad Mayo's work invokes? I challenge anyone to spend an hour or so among the "Birds of Paradise" and not come away feeling at the very least deeply pensive and at the most (and more likely) permanently altered.

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