Natural Inspirations: Flowers and Trees
Dean Roland Johnson and Susan Smoot

Exhibition dates: September 30 – October 27, 2018
Artists reception: Sunday, October 7, 2:00 – 4:00 pm
Gallery Hop: Friday, October 5, 7 – 10 pm

Dean Roland Johnson is particularly fascinated by flowers. They present themselves as beautiful opportunities for visual expression. Dean uses his brush to celebrate their immortal beauty imbued with mystery and passion. Monet has said: “I must have flowers, always and always.” His words echo in Dean’s soul, as his brush comes back to flowers—to their innate and immortal beauty, and their ability to imbue the ordinary with mystery and passion.

Dean spent his early years in the Midwest where he graduated from Cornell College, IA. After receiving an MFA from Pratt Institute, NYC, he taught painting, drawing, design and art appreciation in college for four years. During that period he exhibited his work and received several museum purchase awards in regional and national competitions. Having recently relocated to Winston-Salem with his wife, Jean Marie, Dean now commits his undivided attention to painting and teaching. He was juried into Artworks Gallery in July, 2018. This will be his first exhibition at Artworks Gallery.

Susan Smoot’s inspiration for painting comes from the natural world and her surroundings in North Carolina. She gets enjoyment from seeing beautiful trees in sunlight and shadow, their foliage moving to form shapes that catch her eye. TreeViews is inspired by the remarkable scenes in daily surroundings. Travelling local roads, walking in fields and woodlands, visiting nearby sites provide abundant ideas to paint. She constantly sees compositions in nature, and reminded of the astonishing, yet common, beauty of trees. Capturing an ordinary tree image and revealing its striking nature is one of Smoot’s passions.

Susan Smoot received her degree in Studio Painting from Appalachian State University. Over her career, she has pursued many avenues of expressing her creative talents. She studied several media at the Sawtooth School for Visual Arts and taught children’s art classes. Susan was juried in as a new Artworks Gallery member in February, 2018. This is her first exhibition at Artworks Gallery.

 

Attachments:
Dean Roland Johnson_”Morning Dahliance”.
Deam Roland Johnson,_”Night Moves”.
Susan Smoot,_”Morning Glow”.
Susan Smoot, “The Grace of Age”.

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