This collection of paintings is in the Grants Pass Museum of Art's permanent collection. As a favor to her now deceased husband Mel, Medora attended a series of meetings of a particular city committee — with sketch book in hand. While practicing her art of portraiture, she realized that the same personality types appear on all committees. The drawings were transformed into painted character studies that reveal politicians and their satellite attorneys, reporters and partisan public followers. The work is mixed media, acrylic on canvas, and it includes the use of wood, which represents desks — the dividers between the participants and the public. The figures were intentionally abstracted to avoid recognition. What was important was that they each represented societal archetypes: politicians, lawyers, and reporters, all with human foibles; and a disgruntled, late-1970s public grown gun-shy of politics.

The Plodder

Grants Pass Museum of Art: The Committee