Born and bred in Washington State, Kenneth Callahan became a key figure in what was known as the Northwest School of Painting. The latter included such painters as Morris Graves and Mark Tobey, all of whom shared a mystical interpretation of nature. The refined pictorial style of Callahan’s ink wash paintings, including WAM’s Cascade Mountain Landscape No. 2, reflects the impact of the traditions of classical Chinese landscape painting upon his art. Using a spontaneous calligraphic touch, the artist dissolved contours into flecks or smears so that all of nature appeared to breathe a light-filled atmosphere.

Kenneth Callahan stated that painting allowed him to realize the organic totality of nature: “I feel painting’s purpose should be essentially to create living form . . . not an imitation of actual life . . . Seeing is the thing, seeing with the inner eye and the outer eye, seeing in the maximum possible degree the visual world around me, the constant flux of life, the processes of forming, growth, disintegration, death – repeated endlessly in all forms . . .”