Blue Trout Gallery

Gary Buhler was born in Adak, Alaska, and grew up in the Pacific Northwest, though his connection to Newberg goes back to childhood. As a student at Central and later Dundee elementary schools, he was asked to paint murals in the back of those buildings. Years later he would teach the entire George Fox University art department for a year.

He studied art as an undergraduate at Western Oregon University and completed an MFA in painting at the University of Arizona. He’s painted seriously ever since, teaching when he could.

In 1999 he bought a 1923 commercial building on South College Street and began restoring it. It became Blue Trout Gallery, and it’s still both his studio and his gallery — he’s still evolving the space more than twenty-five years on.

Shortly after buying it, he was one of four people who started the Newberg Art Walk, alongside the proprietors of the Coffee Cottage, the Newberg Gallery, and Cusick Picture Frame. That grew into the monthly event the whole town turns out for now.

The work spans watercolor, acrylic, and oil. Landscapes of Oregon and Arizona, his home and adopted home, alongside a strand that comes from his love of historic neighborhoods and architecture — urban scenes celebrating community and place, informed by the fact that he’s spent decades restoring a building himself.

Original work at prices reviewers consistently describe as reasonable for what it is. And Gary is usually there. People mention that he’ll always share something about the work, which is the difference between buying a painting and understanding one.

Open Thursday through Saturday afternoons, plus Art Walk nights.