Events

Joey Slaughter, an artist working out of Ruston, Louisiana, is an Associate Professor of Art at Louisiana Tech University. He creates abstractions from conversation, as if you could see sound waves from analogue and digital devices passing through and around people. Slaughter has exhibited widely throughout the US in both solo and group exhibitions.

* This exhibition is funded in part by a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Louisiana Division of the Arts. *

Public Reception: January 20, 2022. 5:30 – 7:30 PM.

About the Exhibition and Collectors:
This exhibition is mainly comprised from the art collection of Cheryl and Will Sutton and features works of art by African American artists, focusing on notable artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. The exhibition also features work borrowed from area African American artists. With this exhibition the Suttons express their passion and a purpose for art in our lives, their love for the people of Louisiana, as well as their family and each other. The Suttons have been active art collectors for 40 years.

Collector’s Statement: 
Art ignites our passion and fuels our purpose. It outlives all of us and is passed on from generation to generation. Every great civilization is known for its art. From the earliest sparks of creativity found in ancient cave paintings, to great masterpieces from Cleopatra’s tomb and pyramids to Ancient Greece, Rome, and China …to modern day masterpieces collected in museums around the world. Join us for some inspiring moments to reflect on art’s purpose and perhaps find a new passion for art, beauty, and culture and develop a new purpose in your life.

About the Artist:
William Dunlap is an artist, writer, arts advocate, and commentator with a career spanning more than four decades. He has exhibited internationally, and his work is included in numerous public and private collections. The American landscape is a central element in his work. Dunlap describes his work as Hypothetical Realism, as he states is, “The places and situations I paint aren’t real…but they could be.” Dunlap maintains studios in Coral Gables, Florida; McLean, Virginia; and Mathison, Mississippi.

Artist’s Statement About the Exhibition:
The paintings and single construction in this exhibition are good and true examples of my artistic practice and concerns. The works on paper are oil paint and dry pigment and those on canvas are polymer paint with the occasional addition of gold leaf. The construction, Three Dog Allegory, is made of found and fashioned objects and represents a direction I’m working in more and more.

The landscape is about a sense of place and is a constant in what I do. I owe a great deal to the literature of our region, both its content and process of making. I’d like to think these pieces are informed by if not about history. This history can be of a personal nature like the Starnes House in Hunting and Pecking, or more universal and allegorical as in Landscape with Memory or the Brand Loyalty pieces that have to do with painter’s pants, work shirts and Civil War tunics. These pieces speak to a fierce loyalty to one brand or the other and reference a loyalty that brought our nation to the edge of disunion.

The animals, the dogs and buffalo that appear here, are always symbols standing in for an often absent human presence, the only exception is Late Light – Umbrian Hill Town. This diptych is the earliest work in the exhibition and features a nude female model situated in an ancient cemetery outside the Umbrian village of Todi. It’s a slight departure from the other paintings who feature defunct cotton gins, other agri-buildings and hunting dogs, but the concerns are the same and the choice of subject matter in each work is nothing if not democratic.

I often call what I do “Hypothetical Realism.” This began as a tongue in cheek response to the Art World’s obsession with categorization. The longer I work the more I realize the relevance of the phrase. The places and objects I paint aren’t real, but they could be. Hence, “Hypothetical Realism.”