Experience Paris at Soap Lake art show

SOAP LAKE — A pair of artists and childhood friends plan to bring their visions of Paris to Soap Lake Saturday.

Paintings from Susie Cowan and Sharika Roland return to the Soap Lake Art Museum for their show “April in Paris.” The show opens with a reception party at 7 p.m. at the museum, located at 410 E. Main Street in Soap Lake.

The artwork for the show came from a trip the friends made to Paris starting at the end of August 2009. Cowan and Roland, who have been friends since ninth grade, led a group of painters through the city.

“I think every artist needs to make a pilgrimage there once in their lives,” Cowan said. “It was time to make our pilgrimage. We’re not getting any younger … I think it, historically, has been such a center of artistic energy.”

The trip affected both artists. Roland painted a series of portraits featuring Parisian women and Cowan combined painting, gel transfers of photographs and portraits of historical figures in her work. She described her work as a combination of what she saw and what she learned, with some art history involved. She combined images of landmarks with the portraits of people linked to France, including Napoleon, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison.

“It’s an eclectic mix of people that said to me Paris or France,” she said. “You’ll see some location kind of studies, but because I had some reflection time it went off in another direction.”

Saturday’s show is the second time the artists have shown their work at the museum. Roland presented portraits of Soap Lake women in October, and Cowan showed paintings for a “Dia de los Muertos” show in November.

“I live in Portland, (Ore.,) and have a studio in Tacoma and she lives in Tacoma, so we hang out together every chance we get,” Cowan said. “We thought it would be real fun to do a show together.”

For more information, contact Brent Blake at 509-855-6131.