Guardian Of The Willamete Analysis

The “Guardian of the Willamette” is commonly known for the Willamette Greenway Plan with the intention of eliminating pollution in the river, but by the state of Oregon the infamous guardian was named the 31st governor. Within a span of 21 years, Robert W. Straub initiated his political reputition when he became a member of Lane County’s Board of Commission in 1954. Eventually, he became the state senate in 1959, the state treasurer in 1964, and finally the state governor in 1975. After several remarkable years as an influential governmental icon to the city of Salem, Straub requested that his gubernatorial portrait capture his individuality and service during his time in office. While discussing the intent of the portrait, Paul Missal was
Specifically, he has always been intrigued with paintings that tell a story, which was his intention in the Robert Straub piece as he connects the governor to the river. Paul Missal's unique portrait perfectly combines his known figure, landscape, and still life compositions in one cohesive piece that describes Straub and his governmental role. Straub and Missal spend several days searching for an appropriate site to explain Straub’s passion for the river in order to have Paul Missal work from observation and capture the essence of the river and Straub in his personal sanctuary. The composition was very important and essential to Straub’s recognition, which explains the motives for having the river being a big factor to the piece because Straub wanted his historical plans to have more awareness rather than on himself as a
First looking into one of Missals figure paintings, he paints a nude woman kneeling on the floors, shifting her body weight to her right, wearing a red and purple cloak wrapped onto her back, over her left shoulder and arm (Plate 5). This painting is an example of the art style realism since the piece is painted in nonlocal color, but more specifically arbitrary colored representation of the nude woman. Arbitrary color involves selected colors used without reference to those found in reality. In this case Missal’s choice of color is used to be expressive and not as the portrayal of the real thing, a person. It is interesting how the color palette contrasts with that of the Straub and the natural color of skin with the use of local color. Since the woman is expressed with florescent yellow skin with exaggerated highlights that make her appear white the piece would be arbitrary, but still entails specific attention to details which shows the realistic aspect. Meanwhile, the portrait of Straub still has the same level of detail while depicting him as an realistic human with local