Blue Trout Gallery

Blue Trout Gallery is the downtown Newberg studio and showroom of painter Gary Buhler, who has been showing work at 111 S College St since 2002. Born in Adak, Alaska and raised in the Pacific Northwest, Buhler studied art as an undergraduate before completing an MFA in Painting at the University of Arizona, and he has taught art at George Fox University just a few blocks from the gallery door. The space occupies a restored 1923 commercial building half a block south of Highway 99W, tucked between Coffee Cat Coffeehouse and Pulp & Circumstance, and the vintage storefront is a small landmark of its own on College Street.

The work on the walls runs to landscape and urban landscape: plein air watercolors painted around Oregon, larger studio watercolors, and oils and acrylics on canvas. Water turns up again and again — Buhler describes it as a good metaphor for life, beautiful, essential, and dynamic — alongside a long-running fascination with historic neighborhoods and architecture that shapes much of his recent painting. Oregon and his adopted second home of Arizona supply most of the subject matter.

Because the artist works in the building, visitors usually get Buhler himself, and reviewers consistently note that he will walk you through technique and the story behind a canvas if you ask. Originals and signed prints are both available, and he periodically runs watercolor workshops out of the studio. Public hours are short — Thursday through Saturday afternoons — but appointments outside them are easy to arrange by phone.