OKLAHOMA ARCHITECTURAL LANDSCAPE (AMERICAN SCHOOL)

Bruce Goff's work as an architect is well known, but his work as an educator is less so. During his tenure as head of the University of Oklahoma's architecture school, he founded what's now known as the American School of Architecture. Goff encouraged his students to reject preconceived notions around what made a good building, to study the building traditions of other cultures, to use non-traditional materials. In a time when much of the architecture world was coalescing around what we now call mid-century modernism, Goff refused to let his students be confined by dogma. This produced an Oklahoma landscape of unique buildings, from Blaine Imel's wildly experimental "Osher House" to dozens of commercial structures, homes, and churches that tweak the midcentury style just enough, push the angles just that much more dramatically, the curves just that more organically, use materials just that much more unusual, that shows the architect learned from Goff. This piece was my attempt to capture that landscape.

For more on Goff's work as an educator, see the book "Renegades: Bruce Goff and the American School of Architecture."

Acrylic on reclaimed wood, sealed with polyurethane
15.5 x 27.5"

THIS PAINTING IS SOLD.