“The Will to Endure”
Contemporary landscape paintings from the South, the Southwest and Great Britain will be exhibited at the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi, Mississippi. Exhibit runs Oct. 5-Nov. 23.
The artists are: Clive Pates, Guest Curator, Gulfport, Mississippi; Gerald DeLoach of Alligator, Mississippi; Graham Giles of Suffolk, England; the late Bruce McGrew of Oracle, Arizona; James Cook of Tucson, Arizona; and George Thurmond of Starkville, Mississippi.
A major landscape painting show featuring the best in contemporary work from two continents opens October 5 at the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art. Called “The Will to Endure”, the exhibit pays homage to the eternal beauty and challenges of nature and the ways in which artists interpret their immediate landscapes. Guest curator for the exhibit is Clive Pates of Gulfport, who studied as a Fulbright Scholar at the New York Academy of Art, and who has worked and painted in Great Britain and the United States. Pates, whose work will be included in this six-man show, is an accomplished artist whose essay is in a book accompanying this exhibit.
While the Ohr-O’Keefe museum concentrates on ceramic art, other art forms including painting are also often explored. Pates comments in his introduction to “The Will to Endure”: “Just over a year ago the director of the Ohr Museum asked me to curate a show from my own perspective as a 'Plein-Air’ landscape painter. As an internationally-based artist, I soon became aware of the possibilities this show could represent ~ giving me the opportunity to bring together a diverse selection of artists’ work that would bear witness to both the relevance and endurance of landscape painting... One thing can be said, within all movements and ism’s, when painting comes from the heart, and taps into this fundamental emotional energy, something truly exciting and memorable happens.”
The Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art is located at 1596 Glenn Swetman St., Biloxi, Mississippi, (228) 374-5547,
http://www.georgeohr.org/. Admission is free; small fee for guided group tours. Additional information can be found at
http://www.clivepates.co.uk/ohr/ohrartists.html.
Many of the works in the show will be available for purchase, and a new color catalog of the works will also be sold both at the museum and online. The reception and artist’s talk on Oct. 5 is open to the public. For more information, call the museum at (228) 374-5547. The exhibit is underwritten by a grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and by Dr. and Mrs. Todd Moore of Mobile.
J.R. Baldini
International Plein Air Painters
