2020: Eastern’s Painting and Drawing Faculty Exhibition

New art exhibit draws excitement at Eastern - The Daily Campus

“2020: Eastern’s Painting and Drawing Faculty Exhibition” celebrates recent creative works by our full-time and adjunct faculty, whose scholarship and teaching are grounded in their art-making practice. Although their mediums are interconnected and often supplement each other, the subject of their work varies considerably and narrates their varied multi-cultural journeys, reflections on the surrounding landscape and its destruction, and representations of a voracious consumer culture.

These artists scrutinize the properties of media to express their emotions and subjectivity. They constantly challenge themselves to portray the significance of an impression, expression and the essence of life as they feel it. Achieving the most eloquent and elegant relationship of form and content has been fundamental to untold generations of artists. Eastern’s faculty are no less engaged in reworking their compositions, adjusting scale, rhythm and balance to achieve the drama (or calm) of their predecessors of the Ab-Ex or Pop-Art eras.

Art historians and curators only need to add the biographical details, a set of circumstances under which the artwork was made. We cite the inspiration of other artists, literature, myth and popular culture that situate the work in the world at large. The artwork is then mounted on the gallery wall and the authentic masterpiece is born. The art world has moved a step further, the viewers are moved by the emotions and feelings of the artist, the world around us is seen with greater lucidity.

This exhibition affords visitors with a unique opportunity to view the latest efforts by a group of this region’s most dynamic artists and educators and represents the longstanding strengths of the Eastern Art Department's focus on painting and drawing. This exhibition arrives in unprecedented times. The country convulsed with protests and activism in response to police brutality, while the world slowly emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic against an economy in deep recession. We are woken and look for art that offers a new window onto social justice, racial equity, civic engagement and economic rights. We are eager to embrace the artistic energies and explorations of our art faculty. This exhibition is a biennial installment and we are looking forward to sharing the work of our digital media faculty in 2022.  

Yulia Tikhonova, Art Gallery coordinator