Contributed Photo "Breakthrough" by Gary Faigin is part of “Reality Check: The Uneasy Still Lives of Gary Faigin” at the Coos Art Museum. The exhibit is on display in the Mabel Hansen Gallery through July 5.

“Reality Check: the Uneasy Still Lives of Gary Faigin” is on diplay at the Coos Art Museum through July 5. This exhibition of oil paintings is by Seattle artist and juror for this year’s Expressions West painting competition, Gary Faigin.

Faigin is co-founder and artistic director of the Gage Academy of Art and a respected art critic for KUOW National Public Radio in Seattle.  

Faigin, a “contemporary realist,” grounds his still life work in the tradition of 17th-century Dutch painting, yet wishes to express modern sensibilities as well.

“As you see in this exhibition, I’ve made the personal choice to use the Dutch still life as a point of departure for my own studio work, Faigin said in a press release.  “In a sense, I’m imagining what might happen if one of those paintings were magically transported to the present day.”   

The Faigin exhibition inaugurates the museum’s newly remodeled Mabel Hansen Gallery. The gallery renovation provides the museum with its most modern, museum standard, quality exhibition space, the release said.

Also at the Coos Art Museum  are Expressions West 2008 and “Images of Nature” by Kimberly Wurster.  

Admission is $5. Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday.