Eugene radiologist Roger Hall, about whom I’ve written before, called the announced closing of the non-profit Jacobs Gallery an “emergency” in testimony before the Eugene City Council last week.

The Jacobs, which is to close in January, until recently enjoyed a direct city subsidy that had kept it in operation for the past couple decades. The gallery is housed in the city-owned Hult Center for the Performing Arts.

A former Lane Community College board member, Hall is also an accomplished metal sculptor - and had been scheduled for his own Jacobs exhibition in 2016.

Here are his remarks to the city council:

My name is Roger Hall.

I was an elected member of the Lane Community College board of education for twenty years.

I have been in your shoes.

I know what it is like to approve a budget and allocate funds throughout a complex organization. I also know that there are contingency funds to be used in budgetary emergencies.

We have such an emergency now. It’s called the Hult Center and the Jacobs Gallery.

I am not here to sell you on art. I am here to sell you on the integrity of the Hult Center, which served roughly 140,000 people last year and is a cultural hub of Eugene. The Jacobs Gallery is an integral part of that center, the site of the Mayor’s Art Show and an important venue of visual art.

Let me quote our city website: “The city of Eugene is rich in arts and culture… the renowned Jacobs Gallery displays curated visual art exhibits that bring patrons and visitors to the center during the day and prior to performances….”

Last year the gallery had 10,500 visitors and sold thousands of dollars of art. Let me say it again, 10,500 visitors! And we are going to let it close?

For $150,000, a minute percentage of the city’s budget and less than 2 percent of the more than $6 million designated for culture and art, we could fund the Jacobs Gallery.

The gallery, which had minimal (city) support this year, has been administered by a dedicated director, Beverly Soasey, and a volunteer board. Once closed, the gallery will not easily be re-opened. To find a director such as Beverly and a new board with the same talent and dedication would be almost impossible.

I have been on boards that have had the wisdom and courage to modify previous unwise decisions. I am hopeful that you will rethink this issue and have the wisdom and courage to do what is right for the city of Eugene by protecting the integrity of the Hult Center and funding the Jacobs Gallery.

Not many artists these days endeavor to start their own artistic school. Eugene painter Jerry Ross, though, has just enough romantic flair in his soul to set himself up as the head of a movement that could have grown out of 19th century Italy.

Don’t believe me? Check Wikipedia, which gives a history of American Verismo that includes the work of Ross and his students at Maude Kerns Art Center. You can even find a Manifesto of American Verismo on Ross’ website.

Basically, we’re talking a loose, impressionistic style of plein air painting that actually did originate in Italy a few years before the more famous French impressionists took up the practice. Ross, a confirmed Italophile and long-time art activist — he founded the now defunct Salon des Refuses years ago in response to the Mayor’s Art Show — has been practicing and teaching this style of painting for years. And he does know what he’s doing with a paint brush.

So do at least five of his students — Victoria Biedron, Jean Denis, Jaqueline Hamer Lukowski, Patti McNutt and Sally Schwader.

The work of this Macchia Six — Ross has always managed a slight political edge to his art, as with this title — makes a delicious landscape show that’s on exhibit at the Jacobs Gallery, in the bottom level of the Hult Center downtown, through May 2.

It’s a quiet, thoughtful show, one that’s easy to like. And with six participating artists, it has a lot of paintings; many are hung salon style, one above another on the gallery walls.

The paintings here — of trees, mountains, roads and sky — are enough alike in construction and sensibility that, at least at a casual glance, I probably couldn’t tell one painter in the show from another without the wall cards identifying the artists.

Their palettes are similar, if not entirely the same, woven from earth tones with a few hints of warm purple. The paint surface is pretty uniformly thin and matte. Strokes are bold. “Macchia” turns out to mean “stain,” referring to the loose construction of this style of work, starting with blotches.

Willamette Rhapsody

Ross is not a painter I’d ever accuse of being commercial, but working in this kind of impressionist style, with an Italian flavor thrown in, might be just right for the local market, and I hope the show sells a lot. The images are local, but have a slightly exotic tinge, offering a richer version of the California impressionism that’s been so popular for so long in the West.

Two of my favorites are Patti McNutt’s Willamette Rhapsody, which perfectly captures a quiet stretch of water and surrounding trees, and Victoria Biedron’s View From a Train — the title could belong to a novel — which alone in this show full of nature offers a glimpse of industrial darkness surrounding railroad track.