The University Art Gallery is delighted to present Philip Juras’s Studying the Landscape: Observation, Conservation, and Restoration, on view in the University Art Gallery from January 16 through March 31.
Landscape paintings invite and construct a relationship between the viewer and the place depicted.
Philip Juras paints in oil on canvas in a visual language familiar from the American tradition of landscape painting, but turns that visual tradition to close observation of lesser known and forgotten ecosystems, with the purpose of inviting conservation and restoration.
In Studying the Landscape, Juras portrays fire adapted grasslands, woodlands and savannas in Tennessee, Illinois, and Georgia. Some record the artist’s impressions from particular managed natural areas. Some, especially among the larger works, recreate views of sites as they might have appeared before European-American settlement.
When Juras observes and depicts a landscape, he sees things many of us might not—soil type, centuries-long histories of growth and disturbance, native plants and habitats.
His paintings invite viewers to read the landscape differently. To attend to environments that have not historically been the focus of attention, to understand their histories and the disturbances that make them possible, to value the biodiversity they support, as well as to see and enjoy their aesthetic effects.
Halting the decline of these once widespread systems and their diverse plant and animal species depends on continuing and renewed stewardship. For Juras, “in these landscapes, humans are very much a part of nature, rather than apart from it.
Please note that the UAG is closed for Spring Break, March 6 through 16.
