Foundational Portland painter who revealed Black history in PNW dies at 84

It’s possible that many Portlanders have admired Isaka Shamsud-Din’s artwork without ever realizing it.

Shamsud-Din’s murals and portraits feature friends and family from his own life, as well as many of the pioneering Black characters of the Pacific Northwest, from Dawson Park in the center of Albina to the Oregon Convention Center and Portland State University student union.

After a protracted fight with cancer, the artist, whose involvement in the Civil Rights movement started during his early years in the South and continued in Oregon, where he led art education initiatives in nearby schools and jails, passed away on June 16.

He was eighty-four.

Perhaps Shamsud-Din’s best-known artwork is Rock of Ages, a portrait of his father that served as the focal point of a 2019–2023 exhibition at the Portland Art Museum. Many of the artist’s distinctive elements are present in the work, such as the technicolor hues and a subdued warmth that conveys the dignity of his characters.

According to fellow artist Intisar Abioto, who happened to meet Shamsud-Din in 2013 while working on a street photography project, his work acknowledges Black presence, Black life, and Black love, connection, and community. He truly set the groundwork for us.

[Watch: Black portrayal in art by Isaka Shamsud-Din]

Shamsud-Din was born Isaac Allen in Atlanta, Texas, in 1940. He and his family moved to Oregon after a white mob beat and killed his father.

They went to Guild’s Lake Courts, another enormous housing development that was eventually razed, after landing in Vanport, shortly before the 1948 floods destroyed the entire city. Shamsud-Din told The Oregonian/OregonLive in 2020 that he had already begun his artistic career at such a young age, partly because of the drawings in his schoolbooks that solely had white characters.

As a young man, he won multiple national contests, but by the 1960s, he had moved back to the South, where he worked with many of the leading figures of the Civil Rights movement as a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Later, Shamsud-Din assisted in the establishment of San Francisco State University’s Black Studies program. In the 1970s, he came back to Portland and started the Albina Mural Project, which employed over 40 young Black artists for 20 years and decorated innumerable exteriors. Additionally, he worked with pupils from all around the Portland Public Schools system.

49-year-old Jalil Shamsud-Din remembers helping his father paint a mural on the wall of a nonprofit building on Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard close to Shaver Street when he was a young adolescent.

He completed everything using a grid method, according to Jalil Shamsud-Din. To me, it was incredible to go from a piece of paper to something that was on a wall.

The street that bears King’s name is still adorned with the piece, “Now is the Time, the Time is Now,” which features a big image of King.

The painting effort, according to Isaka Shamsud-Din, was a show of solidarity for many members of the city’s burgeoning Black artist community.

In a podcast recorded last year, Shamsud-Din said Abioto, “I wanted to hold the entire MLK (Boulevard) and many other spots around to have these murals.” In actuality, it was claiming the land.

Shamsud-Din founded Portland State’s African American Visual Arts Scholarship in 2003 and went on to reside in over a dozen Washington prisons.

He acknowledged the late philanthropist Arlene Schnitzer as one of his first collectors in addition to the Portland Art Museum. The nonprofit organization Don t Shoot Portland also supported his work, sponsoring a calendar of his work a few years ago and working to preserve his archives.

A number of McMenamins locations also feature his art.

According to Grace Kook-Anderson, curator of the Portland Art Museum, he was acutely conscious of the bigotry and difficulties he had encountered even as a young child. In the end, though, I believe he was such a kind, upbeat person. And it is actually his truth and his hope if you take the time to look at the paintings.

His parents, Isaac and Geneva Allen, as well as two of his children, Mikal Steen and Yasmin Shamsud-Din, passed away before Shamsud-Din. Seven other children and their families survive him.

For The Oregonian/OregonLive, Zane Sparling reports on court proceedings and breaking news. You may contact him at zsparling@oregonian.com, 503-319-7083, or pdxzane.

Faith and cultural connections

6 free or cheap dance lessons in and around Portland
Beaverton court celebrates marriage equality with free Pride weddings
Clases gratuitas de baile latino en Portland rompen las normas de g nero en Queer Baile
A new Mexican restaurant with a long Portland history is coming downtown
A Portland dance group is breaking gender norms and creating community with free Latin dance lessons