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Reflecting on the Calapooia River

The story about the newest art exhibit at City Hall centers around a river and a television, with a dash of COVID and a pinch of new beginnings.

Lee Roscoe-Bragg’s exhibit, “Upper Calapooia,” is now on display at City Hall until Nov. 27, with an artist’s reception on Oct. 24 from 4-5 p.m. Some of her artwork will be for sale for $300 each.

When Roscoe-Bragg and her husband, Bill, retired, they set their sights on moving closer to their grandchildren in Corvallis, so they mapped out a one-mile radius from the city and settled on a plot of land that put Roscoe-Bragg in her happy place.

“I’d always wanted to live on water, so we were lucky enough to find a lot on the Calapooia,” she explained.

Artwork by Roscoe-Bragg creates an abstract sense of the Calapooia River. Photos by Sarah Brown

Upon completion of a house build, the couple moved into their new home in late 2018 and began settling in, but soon enough COVID overtook the world and isolated them from the community they were just beginning to integrate with. Meanwhile, a television took the stage, apparently creating something of a disturbance in the house and leading the artist to take up acrylics for the first time in her life.

Roscoe-Bragg is first and foremost a watercolorist. She graduated with an art degree from California State University, Long Beach, and taught art at a high school in northern California.

“I think probably the most fun was the kids just looking at their own work and going, ‘I did that!’ I loved that,” she said of the experience.

But now she found herself in a new state and new house with more time on her hands and one television staring her down.

“We had a little bit of a misunderstanding between the two of us and we wound up having this ginormous, ugly television in our living room,” Roscoe-Bragg explained. “So it started out with me trying to figure out how I could disguise it, how I could make it not look like it was the eye in the room staring at us. As I thought it through, I came to the conclusion that my only approach was gonna be that I was gonna have to learn how to paint in acrylic because I needed something that was flexible and, at the same time, permanent.”

Bill and Lee Roscoe-Bragg work together to hang Lee’s artwork on a wall at City Hall.

So began Roscoe-Bragg’s journey painting multiple canvases using a new-to-her medium, creating a rotating display of her art that could be swapped out from time to time to keep the television covered. And her subject matter always stayed the same: the Calapooia River.

The river, she said, gives her a sense of peace in addition to a dazzling display of beauty.

“If you throw a pebble in the water and you get those (ripples), the light reflects off of the bank above it and (gives) this continuously changing, enthralling light show; it’s better than fireworks. It’s like the ‘ooh’ and the ‘ahh’ of the river. Then it dissipates and it’s gone, so you have to throw in another pebble.”

Her artwork, reflections on the Calapooia, if you will, has been an opportunity for Roscoe-Bragg to learn something new while providing a practical solution. She considers her work abstract and borderline surreal, with the objective nature of the river being transparent in an almost subjective fashion.

While painting the river, she said she has found “real peace” in that space and it’s something she wants to share.

“I just kind of wanted to share them locally because in that time of real stress (during COVID) and not knowing anybody, it just gave me such peace,” she said.

For several years now, Roscoe-Bragg has continued working with acrylic because “it’s such fun,” adding that working with watercolor involves more effort with drying, matting, glassing and framing. Acrylic is easier to deal with and it dries faster, she said. Still, the influence of watercoloring is not lost on some.

“As my daughter said, ‘Mom, you’re just painting watercolor but with acrylic.’”

Roscoe-Bragg explained that she does layers and layers of transparency with the opaque medium, creating a translucent effect.

“In my heart, I’m still a watercolorist,” Roscoe-Bragg said.

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