Untitled, (Coos Bay Waterfront) by Gan Martin
- Title: Untitled, (Coos Bay Waterfront)
- Artist: Gan Martin
- Medium: Ink & Color wash
- Size: 12"h x 8.5"w
- Added to collection: 2008
- Donor: The Bill Rhoades Collection, a gift in memory of Murna and Vay Rhoades
- Campus: Rock Creek
- Location: B9/1 Hallway gallery
Gan Martin was heir to a tradition of Oregon painting that goes back to the early 20th century. While he certainly was in touch with later trends in art, including modernism's tendency to explore abstraction, Martin was at heart a figurative artist. His drawings and paintings exemplify the traditions of regionalism: he depicted the natural world and the incidents and objects of daily life. Martin lived in Coos Bay for more than 40 years, so the coastline of Oregon and its forests and farmland were his territory. He excelled at finding unexpected beauty in familiar, often modest objects—rusted bolts, shotgun shell casings, a pile of logs—but he also made landscape paintings that analyze the architectonic forms of the region's geology and capture the space and light of the Pacific coastline.