Royal Nebeker Art Gallery

About the Artists

Sherrie Wolf’s artistic practice reflects a deep and sustained engagement with art history. Her new series, In the Museum, is a collection of watercolors on paper that record, render, and distill the experience of viewing art in public spaces. These works celebrate the architecture of museums, the art on display, and—perhaps most intriguingly—the visitors themselves, whose presence and posture become part of the composition. Wolf’s paintings invite us to reflect on how we look at art, and how art, in turn, looks back at us.

“I have a longstanding habit of visiting art exhibitions. This has fostered a desire to create a series that records, renders, and distills the art-viewing experience, for myself and for other viewers. I’m eternally grateful to the public museums and galleries that I have been able to freely visit, and to the curators and directors who manage them. Also to the visitors, who are sometimes as interesting as the art itself.” – Sherrie Wolf

Wolf is widely known for her large-scale oil paintings that intertwine historical references with contemporary arrangements. Across both still life and figure-based work, she creates theatrical compositions that bridge past and present, drawing attention to the cyclical nature of human experience.  Her work is held in the collections of the Portland Art Museum, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, and Tacoma Art Museum, among others; she has exhibited nationally in both solo and group exhibitions, including a 2022 retrospective presented by the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation; and she is represented by Russo Lee Gallery in Portland.