Build with Bold.
Statement pieces for those who refuse to decorate quietly.
The owner and founder of artHouse LTA is Gabriel van Eikeren, also known as Gabriel LTA and yrstruly. A self-taught artist who moved to Bend at six years old, his work lives at the intersection of color and contradiction.
His paintings are built from vivid, sometimes violent color palettes and heavy, tactile texture. His eye for color comes from a lifetime of independent instinct, shaped as much by fashion and design as by the world around him.
The work tells stories drawn from his most cherished memories and his darkest moments, inspired by love, grief, loss, and the beauty of nature. At their core, the paintings give form to the pain and love he has never quite been able to say out loud.
I believe in a beauty that bites back.
My work can be bright and loud and fun. Sometimes obnoxiously so. But underneath it all, there’s often something considerably darker. Fear. Loss. Rejection. Mortality. Whatever particular ghost or demon showed up for work that day.
I’ve never been especially interested in addressing that darkness head-on. I’m more interested in what it looks like when it gets dressed up and goes out for drinks.
Because that’s what people do. We carry these enormous and heavy and invisible things around all day while asking strangers how their weekend was.
The color isn’t there to deny the pain. It’s there because of it. The beauty is contemporary camouflage.
— Gabriel LTA
Voted Best Art Gallery in Bend.
artHouse LTA recently won Best Art Gallery in the Bend Bulletin's 2026 Best of the Best of Bend Community Choice Awards, which is fitting, because Gabriel LTA has strong roots here.
Gabriel would walk to Kenwood Elementary after school to play basketball and later spent many of his software industry years working on the corner of Bond and Minnesota. Downtown Bend has always been part of his story.
And as Bend began to change, Gabriel was often in what felt like the minority of longtime residents who wanted to see it keep growing. More people. More culture and diversity. A more ambitious arts and music community. He believed Bend could hold onto what made it special without treating growth as something to fear, and that a city becoming larger could also mean becoming more interesting, more creative, and more sophisticated.
After his father, Paul van Eikeren, passed away in April 2025, Gabriel found himself at a turning point. In the months that followed, someone close to him put into words what others had been waiting for him to recognize: “People know you’re talented. People want to support you. But you get in your own way. We’re all waiting on you to make your move.”
artHouse LTA is that move.
Saunter with us for First Friday Art Walk.
On the First Friday of every month, artHouse LTA becomes something new.
Each show begins with a theme that shapes the paintings themselves. For My Color Weighs a Ton, texture was pushed to the extreme, building monolithic works that jumped off the wall and felt physically heavy to interpret. Freeze Frame introduced surfaces inspired by ice, snow and the inevitable harsh Central Oregon winter we are overdue for. With Almost Alive, the work centered on movement: paintings that seemed to shift, stretch and move in front of you.
Every monthly installation brings a fresh atmosphere to explore. Come see what's changed.
Downtown, Disrupted.
artHouse LTA sits at the opposite end of the spectrum from Bend's Western landscape tradition.
Art galleries can sometimes feel buttoned-up and politely predictable. Gabriel built artHouse LTA to be loud, disruptive, and deeply human.
The large-scale pieces often look like they still wet. They announce themselves individually as you walk through, sometimes with bold color, and other times with surreal imagery and a recurring motif. Consider the angelephant, logo of yrstruly apparel: one part grounded in thick texture and brilliantly stubborn, all the while measured and deliberate in their pace, the other half peaceful and patient as they trust their wings to smoothly guide them to their next destination.
