“The Founding of Astor’s Pacific Empire,” an oil on canvas and beaver pelt with a found oval frame.

In a show of new paintings and mixed media installations at RiverSea Gallery, artist Anna Magruder digs into the history of Astoria, depicting some colorful, controversial and lesser-known stories of its residents, unsung workers and their endeavors.

“My inspiration for this show comes from researching topics across an approximate 150-year stretch,” Magruder said. That period is from about 1800 to 1950.

The gallery exhibition, titled “Historia: Astoria’s Layered History,” will open Saturday and be up through Sept. 10.

Magruder is a prominent artist from Portland, known for her portraits with surreal elements. In 2014, she was the recipient of a Regional Arts and Culture Council grant to create nine multimedia pieces depicting Oregon history.

When RiverSea Gallery owner Jeannine Grafton saw the pieces, she invited Magruder to do a similar project focused on Astoria.

The resulting project has drawn inspiration from the city’s colorful history, including its role in global commercial enterprise, the early days of “Shanghaiing” and the exploitation of foreign workers and Indigenous people. Astoria’s past was created by many eccentric and extraordinary individuals, several of whom are highlighted in the exhibit.

Magruder has spent the past year researching those stories and creating 10 new multimedia pieces for this show.

Among the people and stories portrayed, she revisits Bethenia Owens-Adair, an early frontier doctor, Marie Dorion, a female member of the Astor overland exploration party, Chinese cannery workers and Capt. Jonathan Thorn of the Tonquin.

Three pieces focus on Shanghaiing, or crimping — the practice of kidnapping people to serve as sailors — and one depicts Clatsop chief Concomly and the 200 Clatsop people living in the area when the Lewis and Clark expedition arrived. With this exhibit, Magruder attempts to capture their lives of resilience, strength and independence.

Though she primarily works in oil paints, Magruder begins each piece with acrylics to work out issues of composition and color fields. Eventually, she transitions to oils, then works in found objects relevant to her subject matter: strips of canvas woven together to depict basketry and weaving, authentic trade beads dating from the 1800s, can lids, a beaver pelt, and salmon can labels.

In “Astoria’s Gold Rush,” Magruder incorporated a map of Astoria created by weaving yarn, fabric and denim into an actual fishnet. Small gold nuggets in the form of beavers, otters, salmon and logs are interspersed throughout the map, and beaver skulls, pelts, and fish bones are arranged near the bottom of the piece.

“I’m trying to illustrate the commercially motivated overfishing, logging and critter-killing that has had a huge impact on the environment,” she said.

Born and raised outside Dallas, Texas, Magruder has always been an artist. Her parents encouraged her talent, and she attended the University of North Texas as a fine arts major before switching to graphic design.

She began a career in the field, but in 2005 realized her art had fallen by the wayside. So, she began oil painting on the side, exploring the medium and developing her own style, even as she moved around the country to Boulder, Colorado, Portland, Nashville, Tennessee, and Taos, New Mexico.

In 2021, she returned to Oregon, balancing several different jobs to support her art.

“I’ve created a life that works for me. When I’m stuck in my art or getting burned out, I can move to a different type of project that uses a different part of my brain,” Magruder said.

Rather than recreating exact scenes of events, she explained, “I employ historic surrealism, which relies on symbols and metaphors to help capture the emotional impact and broader implications of the subject matter.”

The constant themes in her art are faces, people and the stories behind them.

Magruder loves painting people from the past and going on vintage treasure hunts, and she is always on the lookout for striking images and stories from bygone days.

“Historia” weaves those interests together in a vibrant visual tapestry.

“By exploring history through my art, I hope to provoke the viewer to contemplate how the past relates to today,” she said. “I want to bring the hidden or lesser-known stories to life and capture the imaginations of the viewer. I hope to bring attention to people who were extraordinary in their time, who also were complicated and very human. I also want to highlight the injustices and racism perpetrated against minority groups. Hopefully, everyone who views this show will learn something about Astoria they didn’t already know.”

‘Historia: Astoria’s Layered History’

‘Historia: Astoria’s Layered History’

A project by Anna Magruder, on display Saturday through Sept. 10 at RiverSea Gallery, 1160 Commercial St., Astoria

Meet the artist at a reception from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday during Astoria’s Second Saturday Art Walk

www.riverseagallery.com