((Left) Rebecca in her studio (Right) Rain by Rebecca Baldwin)

Landscape painters often create sunlit scenes and venues but Rebecca Baldwin enjoys painting weather. “A foggy forest, windy day, or approaching storm provide my inspiration,” she says. Photos that she takes on hikes or camping trips around the region provide the basis for her paintings but she tries “to create a feeling rather than a truly accurate representation,” she explains. Baldwin’s paintings are showcased at Red Chair Gallery in August.

Growing up in Bellevue, Washington, she was exposed to the rainy side of the Cascade Mountains. Her father, a Boeing engineer, took her and her three siblings on frequent hikes, teaching them to value and to identify trees, plants and flowers. “He instilled in us an appreciation for all wild things,” she recalls.

Baldwin’s first experience with a drier climate occurred when she attended Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington. “I was fascinated with the wide-open landscapes and different flora and fauna.” At college, she took her first art courses but she did not envision becoming a full-time artist at the time.

For several years, she lived on the East Coast and then moved to Portland. There she started her art career at Portland’s Saturday Market in the 1980s, selling brightly colored drawings and paintings of whimsical animals. She augmented this by creating tee shirt art. Her most popular designs were coffee-related, sold by the burgeoning number of coffee stands popping up everywhere. One design in particular, Drink Your Java. It’s a Jungle Out There, became a nationwide best seller. After six years at the Portland market, Baldwin began entering juried art fairs all over the West Coast, New Mexico and Arizona. At that time, she was not selling landscape paintings. Her work included polymer clay jewelry and rocks etched with petroglyphs in the Native American style.

She moved to Central Oregon in 1993 and took several painting classes at Central Oregon Community College. The area’s natural beauty motivated her to begin painting landscapes. “I love that I can have both the high desert and the wetter climate within easy reach,” she says.

Traveling around the Western United States and occasionally internationally, Baldwin sometimes paints scenes she encounters in other areas, such as Hawaii or Arizona. “But the varied landscapes of Oregon still have the greatest impact on my painting,” she says.

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