Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon Portland Community College

Contre-Jour by Mark Andres

  • Title: Contre-Jour
  • Artist: Mark Andres
  • Medium: Acrylic on canvas
  • Size: 30"h x 40"w
  • Creation date: 2005
  • Donor: On loan from artist
  • Campus: Hillsboro Center
  • Location: Main Lobby

"Contre-Jour" is a French term for painting that means "against the  light," or more accurately, "against the day."  Generally such paintings become very dark and color is lost and value privileged. This painting was made on site at the Mount Calvary Cemetery,  sandwiched between NW Skyline and NW Barnes Road in the late afternoon's long shadows, with a high viewpoint of the roads, which in this painting are almost treated like canals.  The artist made this shortly before his first trip with PCC students to Italy in 2005, and is a strange blend of Portland and an imaginary Italian landscape he was about to encounter.