Featured Artist, Gary Nisbet

Discover Port Townsend.com is pleased to present the whimsical artwork of Gary Nisbet! Gary is an “Artist in Residence” at the Old Alchohol Plant located at 310 Old Hadlock Rd. in Port Hadlock, WA. He has several pieces hanging throughout the Inn and more specifically the walls leading up to and just outside the Gallery.

As a young artist, I apprenticed under the master muralist Anthony Heinsbergen in Los Angeles, working on the restoration and decoration of historical landmark buildings that Mr. Heinsbergen had decorated from the 1930s through the 1970’s. My days were spent scraping through layers of paint and metallic leaf revealing decades of decoration layered one over the next. The richly textured surfaces represented an accumulated history and legacy that I found beautiful and personally resonant. The narrative created by applying newly rendered images over aged and layered areas has become the context of my work as an artist. My work begins on a base of layered collage recalling the history of those stressed surfaces. The paintings feature forms drawn from the domestic realm of home, garden, library, and table. In them, I explore the themes of growth and nurture, cycles of life, rhythm, ceremony, purpose, and belonging. The newly formed arrangements painted over the history of collaged surface seem an appropriate juxtaposition to represent everyday life.            
                                                                                                                                             Gary Nisbet