That guy taking pictures while perched on an out cropping at the Washington Park Zoo, the one with a special interest in big cats, just might be Portland artist Berle Bledsoe.
Bledsoe, a self-taught artist, has been painting seriously for about six years. His first efforts were done many years ago, but marriage, raising a family, and his work as a warehouseman for Unsource intervened. When he retired his wife encouraged him to start again and he now devotes many hours to his rapidly expanding career.
Berle prefers working from photographs and is an expert at imposing imagination and impression on reality. His first love is doing portraits of people and animals. Berle has a unique ability to see beyond the superficial and reveal the inner beauty of his subject, a talent he brings to both his portraits and to his wildlife and landscape works. Many of his works depicting wild animals are a result of his frequent trips to the Washington Park Zoo.
Berle is a regular at the Lake Area Artists show and the Lake Oswego Festival of the Arts. His work has been shown at Art Splash in Tualatin and at shows sponsored by the Spectrum of the Arts. He measures his success by whether a person identifies with his subject and has a good feeling about it. If someone looks at his work and feels they have either been there before, seen it, done it, or felt it, Berle feels he has done his job well. He wants viewers to connect with his work.( Belinki & Duprey Gallery).
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