Please join us in welcoming our new group of Member Artists here at the Rental Sales Gallery. We are delighted to introduce eleven outstanding new artists here into the Gallery. Each of them brings an unique and original artistic perspective, which we are very proud to showcase here!
This year, we decided to welcome new artists through a blended process of open call and invitations. Our focus remains on creating a gallery space that is not only showcasing the very best of regional artistic talent, but which is also representative of the diverse communities that make our region so culturally rich.
We hope that you enjoy this taste of these new works, and we will look forward welcoming you to the Rental Sales Gallery in person very soon.
Ross Collado
Ross Boa Collado is a self-taught abstract expressionism painter based in Seattle. Currently, his art showcases a minimalist style playing with the stark contrasts of depth and color. His distinctly unique earlier paintings consist of visceral creations portraying utopian and dystopian landscapes wrought with intense emotions and psychological solitude.
“My artistic process is highly intuitive. Each piece begins with an overall concept or idea but what’s truly unique is how the direction of the brush strokes, colors that I use, an overall composition evolves over time. The result is a one-of-a-kind piece that feels intentionally created for the owner and sparks conversation while in the room.”
Heldáy de la Cruz
Heldáy de la Cruz (pronounced “el-dye”) is an artist and community organizer. Through illustration and design, his work explores the identities that are lost and found within both the queer and Indigenous diaspora. These, alongside his undocumented status, are at the very core of his community work.
He founded and co-leads a collective called UndocuPDX that provides resources, education, and news for the undocumented community. He is the Design Director of Provecho Magazine and the in-house Senior Designer at Ecotrust.
Scott Erwert
Scott says, “Painting for me is a necessity. It is my ultimate means of expression and communication. My goal in painting is much like that of a songwriter: creating a riff or a section of music which pulls people in, makes them feel, think or look at their own life in a new way. These are pieces that invite and reward multiple viewings, always presenting new and interesting perspectives and visual discoveries.”
“I am intrigued by the balance between representation and abstraction: my current work embraces more abstraction, simplification and marks that fracture the surface of reality. There is something so human and beautiful about blurring these two worlds and I want to share, with the viewer, the progress of this struggle in my paintings.”
Daveed Jacobo
Born in Los Angeles and raised between Oregon and California, Daveed is a child of immigrant and indigenous parents from Mexico and Guatemala.
Photography has always been a constant in their life. From staring at old family albums for hours on end to picking up their first camera as a teenager, Daveed uses the lens to communicate complexity within simplicity; peace within turmoil; juxtaposition within symmetry. Photography is both a story and a snapshot of a moment in time.
As an unschooling activist and youth rights advocate, they facilitate for PDX Flying Squads, which is a youth liberation and anti-oppression collective, and for the Village Free School, a democratic anti coercive self-directed center in Portland, OR. They are also part of the organizing team for the Alliance for Self Directed Education.
Jacqueline Kamin
Jacqueline Kamin is a celebrated artist based in Coos Bay, Oregon, renowned for her landscape, portrait, and still life paintings. After receiving her formal art education at the Corcoran Museum School and studying at the Art Students League and the Sculpture Studio in New York City, Jacqueline has built a prolific career marked by numerous awards and exhibitions.
As a member of several prestigious art organizations, including serving as President and Master Signature Member of American Women Artists, Jacqueline continues to influence the art community.
Micah Krock
Micah says, “My paintings play with the wonderful world I see between abstract and realistic representation. The play between color, texture, patterns and line work is always a delicate dance with the right amount of finished detail coming through the abstract. I’m always searching for the magic to happen and feel the energy and flow come out of the painting, sparking your desire to move your eye around through the abstract and past pockets of reality, to showcase subjects in a new light. The search for the right amount of abstract and detail is constant.”
“Art to me is the expression of how one sees things around them, and we all see it differently. Often in paintings I start with something of a plan, but I’m very open and interested in when it turns into something I wasn’t expecting, that’s art to me. “Art” is the magic that comes out when the paint hits the canvas over and over sparking something new you didn’t exactly plan for.”
Byron Merritt
Byron Merritt is a lifelong photography enthusiast. Educated as an architect and designer, he has had a long career in consumer experience, design, creative and marketing. He spent fourteen years as an executive at Nike in Portland, Oregon, was an executive for Delta Air Lines in Atlanta, Georgia, and currently is an Executive for Amazon Music leading all design and creative for the service.
Photography has always been at the center of his passion for viewing and capturing the world around him. He has exhibited at the Portland Art Museum as part of the Perspectives Exhibit which ran during the summer of 2022 and had forty prints acquired by the museum for their permanent collection. He spent 16 years living in Portland, OR and still has a home there, but currently lives in Los Angeles, CA. He has lived all over the United States as well as abroad in Braunschweig, Germany, where he taught himself the fundamentals of photography and spawned the beginnings of his life long passion.
Jude Morales
Jude grew up in Denver, Colorado where he began his artistic journey as a child. Jude has been working as a professional artist for more than 20 years, recently splitting time between his career as a fine artist and his “career” as a dad. He is fortunate to have spent more and more time in the studio in the last few years.
Jude says, “My works explore connections between people and our environments, whether it is the bond of people’s experiences in spaces or perspectives of landscape. Technically, I work to create images by piecing together color fields, so that no outlines define the subjects. The balancing act of color and form is a big component of my practice.”
Maile Sand
Maile Boeke Sand is a 40ish Artist, Art Therapist, and mother of three kids and one Australian Shepherd. A west coast, best coast girl, she has called Portland home for over 20 years. When asked as a child what she wanted to be when she grew up, her reply was always “an artist”, and she feels privileged to be realizing that childhood ambition.
Maile believes that beauty can be found anywhere and everywhere if we develop the ability to see it. Cultivating Beauty has become one of her core values and daily practices. She shares her sense of wonder over the natural world through her paintings. Her Master’s degree in Art Therapy counseling has helped form a foundation for her current profession as an Artist but it is her faith and the years spent raising her children that truly inspired her artistic development and love for this incredible world we live in.
Suzanne Vaughan
Suzanne says, “I am a professional full time artist living in Portland, Oregon. My art is an expression of color, light and positive energy, from my vibrant modern color field abstracts to my minimal atmospheric landscapes. They capture the fresh vitality of nature’s essence infused with uplifting energy to convey feelings of hope and optimism.”
“Growing up in New Zealand I absorbed the vibrancy of nature, amplified by the intense Southern light and dramatic weather patterns. After relocating to America in 2008 I embraced the shift to oil painting and began creating larger abstract works that radiate positive energy and vibrancy. I also returned to landscapes and more recently abstract landscapes, that abstract the shapes and forms of the natural world combined with the vibrant colors I love so much.”
Michelle Yamamoto
Hood River artist, art educator, and muralist Michelle Yamamoto was initially trained in graphic design before turning to painting when she moved to Asia in 1988. For 12 years Michelle lived on the island of Borneo, then Beijing, China, and Manila, Philippines where her deep curiosity in these wide-ranging cultures captured her imagination and social consciousness.
Now working from her studio and school, Art Circle, her paintings are known for imaginative storytelling of the soulful journey we are all on. She incorporates people and wildlife as subjects in a unique blend of realism and abstraction.
Michelle says, “My oil and acrylic paintings recently have utilized iconic pop culture figures as a doorway to look beyond the fixed perceptions and images we often create of individuals. I have been intrigued and delighted with how my paintings of people bring people together.”
