With layered pigments, a painter builds imagined mountains

When Camas Logue was a kid, he told his grandmother he was planning to be an artist, a doctor and the pope. “She was Catholic,” he says with a laugh, “so I think maybe I was trying to impress her.”

He ended up being right about one out of three. A painter, wood carver, basket weaver and printmaker, Logue is also a drummer in the band Black Belt Eagle Scout. With this multidisciplinary multitude of options, our Art by Northwest profile focuses on Logue’s paintings. (Stream the episode now, or watch the broadcast premiere on Cascade PBS, tonight at 8:50 p.m.)

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I first spotted Logue’s work in the 2025 group show Through the Light: The Sublime in Contemporary Northwest Art at the Museum of Northwest Art in La Conner. I was immediately drawn into his mysterious and richly hued landscapes — craggy land formations in shades of pink-red, highlighter yellow and periwinkle blue, often iced with drips of snow white. Some looked like extraterrestrial snapshots, others like surreal vistas from a dream.

An enrolled member of the Klamath Tribes in Oregon, Logue was born and raised in Portland, where his artist grandmother sparked his creative aspirations. His first foray into landscape art involved carving scrimshaw drawings onto vintage piano keys — scritchy sketches of natural places he’d explored in the Northwest. In 2020, he moved to the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, the homeland of his wife, Black Belt Eagle Scout singer/songwriter Katherine Paul. 

Just as each track of a song builds depth and resonance, Logue uses a process of layering to bring his remembered places to life in visual art. Putting paint upon pigment, lines over landscapes, he imbues each piece with an experiential truth, rather than reaching for a precise depiction of terrain. 

“What I’m going for with my paintings is trying to replicate the energy or the momentum of what’s happening in that place,” Logue explains in the episode. Sometimes the emotional punch lies in a single line of paint, which he allows to drip down the canvas and direct the flow of the work.

Toward the end of his layering process Logue returns to the scrimshaw skills he plied on piano keys long ago, this time using graphite to scratch tiny lines across the surface of the painting. Using this meticulous method, he highlights and defines strata both geologic and poetic — as if to etch a memory of place in his mind. 

With the launch of Art by Northwest Season 3 we’re developing quite a cohort of innovative regional artists. I’m always keeping up with past and forthcoming artists featured on the show, and will keep you posted on their new work and new shows in upcoming newsletters. 

Work by two of our previously featured artists is currently on view in a terrific group show at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art. Co-curated by Robin Little Wing Sigo, Indigenous Craft (through Nov. 1) showcases work by 20+ prominent Indigenous artists from around the Salish Sea.

Among them is carver Jennifer Angaiak Wood (profiled in Season 2), who creates masks based on Yup’ik stories from her heritage. Wood emphasizes that while her masks use traditional techniques, her materials and approach are deliberately contemporary.

Also in the mix at BIMA is prolific artist Joe Feddersen (another Season 2 alum), of the Colville Confederated Tribes. Look for his intricately woven waxed-linen baskets adorned with curious characters, such as aliens, dog-headed humans and parking lots. 

And if you’re anywhere near Missoula, Montana, this fall, absolutely do not miss Feddersen’s retrospective, Earth, Water, Sky (Sept. 4 - Dec. 1) at the Missoula Museum of Art. This expansive show, previously staged at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane, includes Feddersen’s etched glass vessels, fused glass curtains, prints, baskets and more.

Lastly, an opportunity for a sneak peek of sorts. Blacksmith Maria Cristalli will be featured in Episode 3 of Art by Northwest (coming Sept. 3), but if you hurry you can see her remarkable work in person at Gray Sky Gallery in Pioneer Square. Wrought and Woven (through Aug. 31) features Cristalli’s hefty forged steel sculptures, inspired by the forested (and burned) surroundings at her Cle Elum home.