Coming Home

With his show “Coming Home,” Skip Enge will return to Camas to exhibit art and original poetry at Second Story Gallery during the month of June.  

Skip grew up in Camas, graduating in 1971 from Camas High School.  He paid a visit once before, holding a previous one-man art show when the gallery first opened upstairs in the Camas Public Library.  

Now the artist is truly coming home, having just moved back to Camas after 38 years away.  “How this town has changed!” he remarks.  He spent a long career as the exhibit designer for the Oregon Historical Museum in Portland, where he created hundreds of displays, developing the conceptual, structural and graphic schemes for each of them.  He says he was also a builder of the exhibits, heading the work crew.

But Skip emphasizes, “I have always painted.”  And for the past several decades, he says he has painted exclusively in watercolor.  He remembers being “art-oriented” at Camas High School, then working summers in the paper mill to save for college where he earned a Fine Arts Studio Painting degree from Western Washington University.   He says he mixes up his approaches, changing scale and style to meet a theme.  Some of the bodies of work he has created have been urban landscapes, fly-fishing inspirations, and botanicals.  He’s looking forward to painting Lacamas Lake again, he adds.

“Recently I have worked at incorporating painting and poetry.  Symbolism leads me when I choose subjects to paint, whether from life, from image studies or purely conjured.” 

Skip explains.  “The ‘Coming Home’ show is comprised of my most recent work, created in the last year . . . some large pieces, small paintings, and poetry.”  He calls it a diverse group of work in approach and subject matter, “but I like to think with each one I celebrate the love I have for the medium of watercolor.”

The artist says he has sold hundreds of works and received countless commission opportunities over the past 30 years.  The largest ones to date hang in the Firstenburg Tower of Peacehealth Southwest Washington Medical Center in Vancouver.

“I truly enjoy showing, meeting people and sharing my thoughts about the nature of creating my work,” Skip says.  

He will be on hand to meet the public during First Friday, June 7, from 5 to 8 p.m. at a reception that will feature music by Tom Mann.  The gallery is open late that night and then is open to the public during regular library hours, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Wednesday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday through Saturday.  The “Coming Home” exhibit continues through June 29.

Artist's Reception

Friday, June 7

5-8 p.m.

Music by Tom Mann