"American Scenes" Virtual Tour

Click here to view the exhibition digital catalog:
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Since the Hudson River School painters of the early 19th century, artists have chosen to convey the American landscape with a sense of reverence, spirituality, or personal reflection. Contemporary artists Timothy Barr, T. Allen Lawson, and Randall Exon each draw from this tradition, painting remarkable scenes of lush forests, wintery plains, and timeworn architecture of small-town and rural America. However, rather than following strictly what they observe, each artist refracts the landscape through a distinct lens, exploring formal issues as well as those of personal or emotional consequence.
Barr, Lawson, and Exon each convey countryside vistas, mountains, forests or rivers, interpreted through the poetics of tone, light, and color. As many of their landscapes are of scenes that are partially imagined or personally significant, they gleam with a sheen of familiarity and romance that drives them beyond objective depiction. These artists’ images of stone farmhouses, barns, and clapboard houses often glow with a mood of nostalgia and mystery. Their quietly powerful works are contemporary permutations of the longstanding traditions of American landscape painting.