Betty LaDuke: Bountiful Harvest

Oregon artist and writer Betty LaDuke has gained an international reputation for her murals, paintings, and sketches. Her work tends to express socialist progress and life’s continuity, from images of America’s civil rights struggles, such as Play Free (1968), to women’s struggles for survival in war-ridden, spoiled lands, such as Eritrea/Ethiopia: Where Have All the Fathers Gone (1998). Other thematic elements in her work include animals, rituals, and celebrations, which LaDuke uses to illustrate similarities among geographically and traditionally disparate cultures.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website

Whether or not you go, Bountiful Harvest: From Land to Table brings together the stories and paintings from the vibrant local food movement taking place in southern Oregon. In 2010 painter Betty LaDuke was invited to spend time with the men and women who harvest the orchards, vineyards, and farms in southern Oregon. Betty took to the field with her sketch pads and captured the spirit of each worker in her brilliant and vibrant wood painted panels . She also listened to their stories and the stories of small, organic farmers.

Bountiful Harvest: From Land to Table