Student Union decorated in vivid color

Every month, the Fireplace Gallery hosts a new artist. For the next four weeks, the MHCC showplace in the Student Union is hosting a number of large paintings by Portland-area artist Jeff Tao.

All of the pieces include a vivid and wide range of colors, with the exception of one.

Four years ago, Tao was in a state of depression when he chose to “step out of my comfort zone. So, I flew to Peru,” he explains in his artist’s statement. While in Peru, he worked on a permaculture farm and partook in the shaman practices there. It was here that Tao participated in 21 ceremonies within three months. And during the ceremonies Tao drank Ayahausca tea.

Ayahausca tea is a hallucinogenic brew made from Banisteriopsis caapi vines and Psychotria viridis leaves. The tea is used in many religious sacraments and ceremonies. It is believed that using Ayahausca will help to align one’s inner self with philosophies and cosmologies.

Tao now goes by the name Boonanah Maca, derived from his diet while in Peru – bananas and maca (a rootlike plant similar to ginseng). He explains his recent works as “the quantum world of my mind,” and they are just that.

Tao choose to put up one work of his art from before his time in Peru in the Fireplace Gallery. Looking at “Porn Addiction” alongside his other works, you can clearly see the difference in his state of mind.

While most of Tao’s work has vibrant and vivid colors, “Porn Addiction” features more graying colors. A second piece by the artist, “Conjuring Shamans,” reminds me heavily of “Porn Addiction.” Both pieces include a gray embodiment of a person coming in from the bottom left side of the canvas. Up close, however, “Shamans” is so much more.

First off, the painting has a vibrant pink background laced with warm colors. An embodiment of a shaman is sprouting from the water. While “Porn Addiction” is more crude and hard, “Shamans” shows a wild, loose womanlike figure. One can see the personal growth in Tao just by looking at these two paintings.

Some of my favorite paintings featured in the gallery are “Flower Garden,” “The Dawn of Pre-Though,” and “Kundalini.” Each, along with some others, include “the flower of life” – a symbol made up of evenly-spaced overlapping circles that make up a flowerlike shape. This symbol can be found in many religions and is widely known for being a part of sacred geometry.

“Flower Garden” is made up almost entirely of the flower of life. Around the border of the canvas wraps a snakelike coil in dark greens and purples. In the center of the piece are finely detailed circles in pink and light green. Tao added more detail by including blue and pink centers to the flowerlike shapes. Each piece of the flower of life pattern was given depth using hand-painted highlights and shadows. On the very front layer of the painting are birds and bugs. Though some of these creatures are painted realistically, others have especially bright colors.

Every one of Tao’s paintings is amazingly detailed. Using realism, abstract, patterns, sacred geometry, and brightly contrasting paints, he gives viewers something to look at for hours.

Tao’s art will remain in the Fireplace Gallery through Oct. 27. Stop by and check out the paintings anytime Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.