Lila Shaw Girvin's retrospective exhibit reflects a life lived in pursuit of knowing and understanding

Every day around noon, weather dependent, a beam of light enters the Spokane home Lila Shaw Girvin shares with her husband, George. The Girvins have lived in this particular house well over half of Lila's 93 years, during which time she's observed how the sunbeam, framed by the skylight, bounces off the copper-encased fireplace and bathes the ceiling in light.

"It is just magical," Girvin says, adding, "You know, it just lasts for a short period of time."

A short period of time.

A moment, which, when strung together with other moments, becomes the fabric of life. And the inspiration for the title of Girvin's retrospective exhibition at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture on display through March 12, "Lila Shaw Girvin: Gift of a Moment."

The show is as large and intimate an exhibition as Girvin has ever had, made more so by the setting. In the center of the gallery sits a plush rug, midcentury style chairs and sofa, a coffee table, and several books from Girvin's collection, like Joseph Campbell's Myths to Live By and Carl Jung's Man and His Symbols. A sign encourages visitors to "sit, rest, and read."

Eighteen of Girvin's paintings pulse from the gallery's dark charcoal walls. They range from thickly painted pieces from the '60s to nuanced, layered washes of color on canvas created in more recent decades. Many remind of landscapes, but not just landscapes.

"The work can be from feeling, memory — occasionally a photograph — being alone, music, [or] public radio," Girvin says. "It is solitary, which I like."

Girvin's work is influenced by physical landscapes she interacts with, says Anne-Claire Mitchell, the show's guest curator, but it's also the product of something more metaphysical.

"It's a meditative experience for her, and she makes it clear that the final result is a surprise," Mitchell says.

Another surprise: the exhibition itself.

Although Girvin has shown regionally on and off throughout the decades, and has had a long relationship with the MAC (dating back to when it was still the Cheney Cowles Museum before the name changed in 2001), she was surprised when the MAC's executive director, Wesley Jessup, first discussed showing her work.

"I was astonished that they approached me," Girvin says. "I'm of the generation that grew up with being told, 'You should be modest.'"

Both Jessup and Mitchell, however, are effusive in their praise of Girvin's work.

In 2017, Jessup saw Girvin's work and was, he says, "immediately taken by the sensitivity of the color and brushstroke. I thought her compositions were sophisticated."

"Lila has been a really important artistic figure in the Inland Northwest, and she's also been a major figure in community engagement as well," Mitchell adds.

Girvin was born in 1929, at the onset of the Great Depression, when America had mostly recovered from one world war but was sliding inexorably toward another.

She grew up in Jefferson County, Colorado, near Denver, with vivid memories of the landscape: "Red Rocks, Aspen, big sky, sunshine, openness, flat plains and high mountains."

Her mother was very active, with "kindness in every bone," says Girvin, while her father promoted reading, especially on religion. Girvin was interested in music, playing piano and working in a record store through high school. When it came time for college, however, Girvin pursued art history and painting at the University of Denver.

"I was definitely a product of my generation," Girvin says. "I didn't really know what I wanted to do and art was one of the things that was possible for women."

While in college, the return of soldiers from World War II in the late 1940s added a seriousness to campus life, Girvin says.

"They added a dimension that was very thoughtful about their lives and about what they were going to do with their lives," she says.

If campus life narrowed Girvin's focus toward a more intentional approach to her own life, her college job in an art gallery owned by an Englishman expanded her worldview, especially from the proprietor's familiarity with Chinese culture.

After Colorado, a newly married Lila moved several times — Detroit, Michigan and Red Bank, New Jersey — while husband George built his medical career. Their last stop before Spokane was Seattle, where Girvin remembers "spectacular beauty, mist and rain, mild temperature, trees, lushness and the sea." A big contrast from Colorado.

Girvin also exalted in the Northwest's educational opportunities.

She recalls, for example, attending a lecture at the University of Washington by Joseph Campbell, author of the best-selling The Hero With a Thousand Faces, a seminal book about the archetypal "hero's journey" as expressed through the world's mythologies.

"And he got up and spoke totally without notes," Girvin says. "It was just unbelievable. It was just fascinating."

Girvin was a frequent visitor to Seattle's Frye Art Museum and its free classes, where she developed her love of working with oil paint.

"I liked its fluidity," says Girvin, whose painting process would evolve from the conventional — canvas, easel, paintbrush in hand — to more like watercolor with translucent paint.

"I start with canvas on the floor, thin the paint and pour," says Girvin of her current process, which is similar to modernist Helen Frankenthaler. As Girvin adds paint and rubs it away, guided by intuition and staying in the moment, the primary question for her is "when to stop."

While in Seattle, Girvin also studied under Kenneth Callahan, an internationally known American painter and former Seattle Art Museum curator. Like Girvin, Callahan was influenced by the Northwest landscape and non-Western aesthetics, including pan-Asian culture.

"Lila was in proximity to artists like Callahan," says Mitchell, "and even though [the MAC] exhibition doesn't address those relationships explicitly ... I think savvy visitors are going to be able to see the more classic expressionist influences in her earliest pieces from the '60s."

Viewers will also see the transition from Girvin's early narrative style, when she first moved to Spokane in 1958, to an increasingly abstract and eventually non-referential style of pure shape, line, color and space (versus any recognizable subject matter).

"He Took His Vorpal Sword in Hand" is from the 1960-1980 time period — Girvin rarely assigns a singular date to her artworks. The painting borrows its title from author Lewis Carroll's poem "Jabberwocky," in which an unnamed child slays the mythical Jabberwock, but it carries another message, too.

"That one is about the Vietnam War, which I was very opposed to," says Girvin, noting that "toward the end of the war, my oldest child got the draft number of 16," putting him on the short list to serve.

Another of her four children is the subject of "Matthew," also from 1960-1980, and its inclusion in the exhibit is deliberate and deeply personal. The painting shows a small, golden-hued child tucked into what reads like a tree trunk of colorful slashes and lines. In 2001, Matthew — Matt — died in a helicopter crash en route to a Mongolian province while on a United Nations mission for its children's fund.

In response, Girvin painted "Out There" in 2001. The nearly 4-foot-square painting on loan from Gonzaga University's Jundt Art Museum features washes of ultramarine blue with areas of white and hints of black. If the viewer didn't know the backstory, they might assume it's a rendering of the cosmos.

"I believe the creative journey cannot be separated from the personal," Girvin says. "The loss of a beloved child, a humanitarian dying in an accident while helping others causes examination of everything."

Combined, the inclusion of these two paintings conveys Girvin's willingness to be vulnerable, to connect with others and, ultimately, to understand something about herself through the experience.

After asking her family what they thought of her being featured at the MAC, she also asked herself: "What is there that is negative about it at this time in my life?"

Thus the gift of a moment goes both ways: the gifts Girvin feels she was given and the ones she is sharing with viewers.

"I guess that's where I said, 'This is an opportunity to trust.'" ♦