APSU artist Greene opens 'Dermabrasion' exhibit at Trahern Gallery
Warren Greene, assistant professor of art and Trahern Gallery director at Austin Peay State University, has a conflicted relationship with Tennessees rural countryside. Specifically, hes troubled by the lands indifferent nature.Im curious about the ideas and emotions this landscape doesnt care about, but is necessarily shaped by - both literally and figuratively, he said. This ambivalence hurts my ego because it ignores the language that it has become in my mind.
Warren Greene, assistant professor of art and Trahern Gallery director at Austin Peay State University, has a conflicted relationship with Tennessee's rural countryside. Specifically, he's troubled by the land's indifferent nature.
鈥淚'm curious about the ideas and emotions this landscape doesn't care about, but is necessarily shaped by - both literally and figuratively,鈥 he said. 鈥淭his ambivalence hurts my ego because it ignores the language that it has become in my mind.鈥
This is what the artist ponders as he touches his brush to a canvas. The works he's created through this contemplation will be on display this month with the Trahern Gallery's new show 鈥淒ermabrasion: Exhibition of Works by Warren Greene.鈥
鈥淭hese paintings are landscape paintings, but they are also figurative paintings. These surfaces on each piece are worked and reworked with enough repetition they almost go off on their own if it weren't for the regularity of the actions of my trowels, brushes and sanders,鈥 Greene said.
鈥淚n the end, they form a kind of corpus, composed of sometimes translucent and other times opaque skins that sometimes hide and other times reveal. The forms they create on the surface seem to emerge both organically and synthetically.鈥
Greene, who earned his Master of Fine Arts from the Memphis College of Art, has made a name for himself in recent years, with numerous exhibitions of his work at venues such as Memphis's Perry Nicole Fine Art Gallery, the Dixon Gallery and Gardens and Lyon and Lyon Fine Art in New Orleans.
In addition to these exhibits and his teaching duties, Greene has curated innovative shows, such as this fall's 鈥淛ettison: New Ideas in Abstraction,鈥 and he's conducted several lectures at colleges throughout Tennessee. His work is found in the collections of Debbi Fields, Paragon National Bank and US Bank, among others.
His exhibition opens at 7 p.m., Nov. 9 with a reception. It runs through Dec. 2, and the pieces in 鈥淒ermabrasion鈥 are for sale.
For more information on this show, contact the APSU Department of Art at 931-221-7333. -- Charles Booth