Henk Pander has lived in Portland, Oregon, for 45 years but describes himself as a "reluctant immigrant" from his native Holland. He has maintained a cultural double vision. He records and interprets American technology, materialism, topography, and disaster in paintings and drawings that radically revise aspects of traditional Dutch painting in order to make hard-hitting American art. At the same time, he frequently paints specifically European scenes and subjects.

His painted narratives range from memories of Nazi-occupied Holland, to a conflation of the American West with Deep Space, to the burning of the New Carissa off the Oregon coast. Combining personal and art historical memory with the subject matter of modern life, Pander creates works that are profound in their seriousness, dramatic intensity, and expressive power.