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SJRCC Press Release
June 2009
FloArts to present traveling exhibition “Liquid Muse: Paintings from the St. Johns Region”
Florida School of the Arts will present the traveling exhibition “Liquid Muse: Paintings from the St. Johns Region” August 3 – 26 in the FloArts main gallery located on the Palatka campus. The event is free and open to the public.
The exhibit consists of works from 35 Florida artists whose work is inspired by the St. Johns River. Mediums vary from acrylics and oils to watercolors and photography by classic realists who capture the accurate nuances of light to artists who express emotions the river extracts from them.
Artists have been drawn to this enigmatic watery maze for centuries, but the lens of time, culture and individual sensibility has framed their “vision” of the region. The contemporary Florida artists who contributed paintings to the exhibition have all been drawn to water as a source for their creative work, but their paintings reveal that the river region continues to inspire exceptional works of art in many different styles. What emerges as a common theme is the awareness of a need to preserve and protect the beauty and viability of the St. Johns watershed.
The exhibit will open Monday, August 3 at 6:00 p.m. with the guest lecture “Bobcats and Egrets and Gators, Oh My: Naturalists in La Florida,” an engaging look at the bio-diversity of the St. Johns region. Lecturer Mallory O’Connor will discuss the courageous artist-naturalists who ventured deep into the Florida wilderness during the 18th and 19th centuries searching for new species of plants and animals to examine and document. The program looks at the vibrant paintings of the artists-naturalist such as Mark Catesby, William Bartram and John James Audubon.
The exhibit will close with a second guest lecture on Tuesday, August 25 at 6:00 p.m. The engaging duo of artists Sean Sexton and Spence Guerin will share the ranching, citrus cultivation and farming history of the river since the Spanish introduced cattle to the area in the early 1500s.
They have had an indelible effect on the landscape of east coastal Florida. Artist/rancher Sean Sexton is a third-generation Floridian who lives with his family on their 600-acre Treasure Hammock Ranch west of Vero Beach in a region comprising the headwaters of the St. Johns and Sebastian Rivers. “My life is a head-on collision of art and agriculture,” Sexton said, dividing his time equally between taking care of a 300-head beef and cattle herd and painting in this working landscape. Sean’s good friend and neighbor, artist Spence Guerin of Melbourne, often visits the ranch, and many of his paintings depict landscapes of the region. In this presentation, the two artists reminisce about the experience and difficulties of working separately and together in Florida’s agricultural outback.
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The participating
artists are:
Kate Barnes
Jack Beverland
Eleanor Blair
Peter Carolin
Jerry Cutler
Rainey Dimmitt
Jim Draper
Cynthia Edmonds
Heidi Edwards
Pam Griesinger
Rene Guerin
Spence Guerin
Tom Hundersmark
Blake Harrison
Brenda Hofreiter
Maury Hurt
Carl Knickerbocker
Sydney McKenna
Kevin McNamara
Arnold Mesches
Larry Moore
Bunny Morgan
Theodore Morris
Hansen Mulford
John O’Connor
Tim Peterson
Dean Quigley
Gene Roberds
Tom Sadler
Sean Sexton
Trish Thompson
Margaret Tolbert
Allison Watson
Margaret Watts
Hope White
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The exhibit is curated by Mallory O’Connor and Gary Monroe and organized by the Thomas Center for the Arts, a program of the City of Gainesville Department of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs. Funding for this program is made possible through a grant from the Florida Humanities Council, a State Program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
For more information, call (386) 312-4300.
Return to SJRCC home page.
MEDIA CONTACT:
Susan Kessler
SJRCC Director of Public Relations and Publications
5001 St. Johns Avenue
Palatka, FL 32177
(386) 312-4020
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