Of This Place: The Delta Landscape, The Art of Jeanne Seagle exhibit
- Ongoing: until Saturday, January 21, 2012
- Tuesday: 9:00am
- Wednesday: 9:00am
- Thursday: 9:00am
- Friday: 9:00am
- Saturday: 9:00am
- Where: Delta Cultural Center, Helena-West Helena
- Cost: Not available
- Age limit: Not available
Seagle’s Delta work highlighted in new exhibit
HELENA-WEST HELENA – A new exhibit of work by Memphis artist Jeanne Seagle is underway at the Delta Cultural Center in historic downtown Helena-West Helena, Arkansas.
"Of This Place: The Delta Landscape, The Art of Jeanne Seagle," runs through Saturday, Jan. 21, at the DCC Visitors Center at 141 Cherry St.
A total of 29 recent paintings feature the acclaimed artist's impressions of the Arkansas Delta. Seagle works in oil, acrylic, oil pastel, and gouache.
“I like to paint landscapes,” she reflects in her “Of This Place” artist’s statement. “”I grew up on a forest ranger station, an only child wandering around in nature, so it comes naturally.”
Seagle’s familiarity with nature and an appreciation of landscapes was not without challenges, though, as life brought her in contact with new environments, she notes.
“It took a long time for me to want to paint the landscape around here. I am from Colorado and I love the mountains and canyons and deserts,” she explains. “But as I wandered the farm roads of Arkansas and Mississippi, I finally learned to love the flat landscape of the Delta, too. Now I am fascinated by its surreal beauty and love to paint the fields and sky, the swamps and bogs, and the people who are as eccentric as the landscape.”
As she considers her art and her life’s journeys, Seagle sees in herself a connection to a rich artistic heritage.
“I feel that I follow in a long tradition of artists who have traveled and painted what they saw on their travels, bringing back a visual report to the folks at home,” she says. “Crossing the Mississippi River to enter this world that was so recently a wilderness, and that is fast disappearing, is most certainly a trip away from my familiar urban surroundings. It is one that is as exotic as traveling far away. I try to bring this vision home in my paintings, and to record and to honor its fragile and temporary beauty.”
Seagle holds a bachelor’s degree of fine arts from the Memphis College of Arts and did undergraduate studies at Mississippi University for Women.
Her work has appeared in numerous galleries and museums, including the Arkansas Arts Center at Little Rock, the Dixon Museum of Art at Memphis, and Tennessee State Museum at Nashville. Public pieces by Seagle are displayed at a number of Memphis locations, including LeBonheur Children’s Hospital, Saint Jude Hospital, and Bellevue Baptist Church.
The opening reception is held in conjunction with Helena's Second Saturday art walk. In deference to earlier darkness of fall, the art walk begins at 2 p.m. and officially ends at 5 p.m.
Gallery hours at the DCC Visitors Center at 141 Cherry Street and the nearby DCC Depot at 95 Missouri Street are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. “King Biscuit Time,” the nation’s longest-running blues radio program, is hosted each weekday at the DCC Visitor’s Center by “Sunshine” Sonny Payne, from 12:15-12:45 p.m. “Delta Sounds,” a weekly radio production of the DCC, is broadcast each Friday at 1-1:30 p.m.
For more information, interested persons can call the Delta Cultural Center at (870) 338-4350 or toll free at (800) 358-0972, visit the DCC online at www.deltaculturalcenter.com, or e-mail info@deltaculturalcenter.com.
The Delta Cultural Center shares the vision of all seven agencies of the Department of Arkansas Heritage – to preserve and promote Arkansas heritage as a source of pride and satisfaction. Other agencies within the department are the Historic Arkansas Museum, the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, the Old State House Museum, the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, the Arkansas Arts Council, and the Natural Heritage Commission.
This event was posted Nov. 13, 2011 and last updated Nov. 15, 2011
