“Unframed,” an MFA painting exhibition featuring the work of professor Chris Phillips and his graduate students, opened at the Liberty University Art Museum Tuesday, Oct. 6.
The exhibition features the work of students in Phillips’ Graduate Painting Topics course.
“My focus is to, as much as possible, cater to each student’s needs, to allow them to come up with a custom arrangement of projects that they believe is going to help them,” Phillips said.
According to Phillips, during the weekly class sessions, he meets with each student to address problems and give feedback on their projects.
“I think there’s a part of me that always wants more … just to push them and drive them,” Phillips said.
The class includes 13 students and only meets for eight weeks, according to Phillips.
“I think they’ve been able to develop a healthy competition between themselves,” Phillips said. “It’s been pushing them — driving them to produce their best work.”
Todd Smith, director and curator of the Liberty University Art Museum, said the purpose of the show was to showcase the work of MFA graduate students and faculty.
“One of the goals of this exhibition is to highlight the teaching philosophy of the faculty of the Department of Studio & Digital Arts, and that is the mentorship model,” Smith said. “This can be seen in the way Professor Phillips includes demonstration, evaluation and feedback with media, tools and techniques.”
Smith said the overall vision for the show is to glorify God through displaying the work of students and faculty.
MFA students Elise Corona and Olivia Blankenship contributed their work to the exhibit.
Corona created an oil painting on a 16-by-20-inch wood panel. She said the painting was inspired by a picture she took at Virginia Beach.
“When I was trying to figure out what I wanted to paint this semester, I found this picture that I’d taken and I was drawn in by the warmth of it,” Corona said.
Corona explained that while the picture was not as red as her painting, she used the color to communicate her own perspective of the warmth of the sunset.
“I really leaned into the warmth, but I also wanted to explore a little bit with style,” Corona said. “I’ve done a little bit more photorealistic painting, drawing work in the past and so trying to branch out a little bit more and lean into style so I went more of an impasto route.”
Corona explained impasto, a style of art that requires the artist to take the paint from the Palette and put it directly on the canvas without blending.
“I have done pieces similar to this before, but they didn’t turn out very well,” Corona said. “And I think with art, you come to a museum like this, and you see the artist’s finished work — and you see it in all its grandness — but you don’t see the struggle behind the final work.”
In contrast, Blankenship worked with gouache painting to create an illustration.
“I want to specialize in illustration,” Blankenship said. “So, I really wanted to push myself in that area by choosing a new medium.”
Blankenship described gouache as a cross between acrylic paint and watercolor. She said it was a challenging medium to work with.
“(It) can make for some really interesting color combinations, some really interesting effects or it can just drive you crazy,” Blankenship said.
Blankenship’s painting of a little girl with a traveling bookstore on the back of a pink bear is intended to evoke a childlike feeling.
“She’s (the girl) in some ruins right now, but I still wanted to capture the feeling of coziness, even though they are somewhere kind of broken-down,” Blankenship said.
Blankenship mentioned that she talked to kids at church and her friend’s siblings to understand what children enjoy and further her ideas.
“That keeps my imagination from … growing stale,” Blankenship said.
Regardless of the painting medium students chose, they all faced challenges creating artwork within the eight-week time frame of the course.
“I was working on this painting, and I was really frustrated with it because it just wasn’t turning out the way that I had hoped it would,” Corona said.
Ultimately, she decided to scrap the painting, hoping for results that were not just good, but great.
“Sometimes it pays off to make brave decisions,” Corona said. “I’m very happy with that result. It paid off.”
Blankenship faced different challenges working with an unfamiliar medium. She also had to restart when the colors were not working the way she had originally intended.
“For every painting I’ve done so far, there have been at least two attempts,” Blankenship said.
Despite the challenges, Blankenship is pleased with the results.
“I hope this encourages people to try out a new medium, even if it seems intimidating at first,” Blankenship said.
Junior Hailey Gregory visited the exhibit during its soft opening and said her favorite paintings were the watercolor animals by Anna McCullough because of the paintings’ creativity and color.
“I think it’s super cool,” Gregory said. “I think it’s fun to see all the progress they (the students) have worked on.”
Phillips, whose own artwork is displayed in the gallery during this exhibit, is also pleased with the hard work the students put into the class and encourages students to visit the art museum.
“Come look at our work, see what our students are doing,” Phillips said. “They are storytellers and also just very good painters.”
The Liberty University Art Museum gallery, located in Green Hall 1855, is open from 10 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, except during Wednesday Convocation.
Young is the Director.
Lemons is the Digital Media GSA.