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Hutcheson Gallery features Cheekwood art, hand-picked by Dawn Whitelaw

Janel Shoun-Smith | 

The John C. Hutcheson Gallery presents “Selections from Cheekwood,” curated by nationally known artist and Lipscomb University alumna Dawn Whitelaw, through Sept. 26. The exhibit features 16 pieces selected by Whitelaw from the 8,000-piece collection of American and contemporary paintings and sculpture held by the Cheekwood's Museum of Art in Nashville.

Cheekwood art Windy Day
Martha Walter
Windy Day by the Sea
1982.3.3
Cheekwood art fisherman
Robert Henri
Fisherman’s Daughter
1997.3.2

The Hutcheson Gallery is located in the John D. Hughes Center, best accessible from the Lipscomb entrance at Belmont Boulevard and Glen Echo Road. The gallery is open to the public, free of charge, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. Call 615.966.5813 for more information.

Whitelaw selected the pieces that best represented exemplary use of a variety of artistic techniques. The show will also include a couple of works by Whitelaw, who won Best of Show at the Portrait Society of America in Washington, D.C., and served as an adjunct instructor at Lipscomb for 25 years.

“All the paintings in this exhibition were selected for their visual appeal. The artists have depicted ordinary life, but from a very personal point of view,” she wrote in a statement for the exhibition. “They made aesthetic decisions based on their own selective eye rather than using the eye of a camera, which records everything, it sees with equal emphasis."The artists' ability to make choices about line, texture, color and edge, make their works interesting to look at.”

Among the works on display are Fisherman’s Daughter by Robert Henri, Upper Broadway by Leon Kroll, Windy Day by the Sea by Martha Walter and Durham, Connecticut by George Inness.

The Cheekwood collection “is an absolutely wonderful historical collection, and any time we get a chance to showcase works of this caliber, we will certainly welcome it,” said Rocky Horton, director of the Hutcheson Gallery and associate professor of art at Lipscomb. “It is really an unprecedented honor to show these works. The caliber of these loaned works is what anyone would expect to see in a major museum collection.”

 

About the John C. Hutcheson Gallery

The John C. Hutcheson Gallery in the James D. Hughes Center opened fall 2010. Curated by Lipscomb art department faculty, the Hutcheson Gallery features a variety of exhibitions each semester. The gallery provides an opportunity to study, exhibit, stimulate appreciation for and advance knowledge of works of art that collectively represent the broadest spectrum of human achievement and artistic interests. Occasional free lectures by nationally and regionally known artists are held in conjunction with the exhibitions.

Exhibitions in the past two years have included “Ka-Pow! Comics and Cartoons in Contemporary Culture,” featuring Eric Powell, Roy Lichtenstein, Mitch Breitweiser, Phillipe Perreno; the photography of Jordan Tate; graphic design work by Dan Ibarra & Michael Byzewski of Aesthetic Apparatus; the cartoons of Daniel Johnston; and an exhibit of Lipscomb alumni works.

 

About Dawn Whitelaw

Dawn Whitelaw maintains a studio at The Factory in Franklin, Tenn. For over 25 years she taught basic principles of oil painting as an adjunct instructor at Lipscomb University. Among her influential teachers are Scott Christensen, Cedric Egeli, T. Allen Lawson, Quang Ho and Jim Pollard, but most of her instruction and inspiration comes from nationally preeminent artist Everett Raymond Kinstler. At present, she teaches workshops nationally.

Her ability to capture life in paint has earned honors including the Certificate of Merit for her portrait at the National Portrait Convention in 1991, Best of Show at the Portrait Society of America in Washington, D.C., and the Award of Excellence in the Oil Painter's of America exhibition in 2002.

In 2010 Whitelaw was one of ten American women artists invited to participate in the "Inspiring Figures" exhibition at the Butler Institute of American Art. Her work was also included in the Society of American Impressionists National Exhibit at Richland Fine Art in Nashville.

Cheekwood art Upper Broad (2) Cheekwood art Zinnias (2)
Leon Kroll
Upper Broadway
1975.1.2
Ella Hergesheimer
Zinnias
1960.2.14

About “Permanent Residents” at Cheekwood

In tandem with Lipscomb’s show, Cheekwood's Museum of Art is showing “Permanent Residents: Artists from Cheekwood’s Collection” through Sept. 22. Cheekwood is located at 1200 Forrest Park Drive, Nashville, Tenn.

Cheekwood costs $12 for adults, $10 for seniors, $5 for college students and $5 for youth. For more information call 615.356.8000.

The Cheekwood exhibition includes fine examples of nineteenth-century American painting from landscapes in the tradition of the Hudson River School to portraits, genre scenes and still lifes. In addition, Cheekwood will display its portrait miniature collection that is one of the finest in the country. Moving into the twentieth century, there will be representative examples of works by “The Eight,” including Robert Henri, John Sloan and George Luks. Highlights from the later twentieth century include paintings by Larry Rivers, Andy Warhol and Jamie Wyeth. The paintings will be complemented by a cross-section of American prints, drawings and photographs. 

“Permanent Residents” will dedicate special galleries to Red Grooms, William Edmondson and art of the American West. Nashville-born artist Red Grooms is represented in the collection with paintings, prints, watercolors and one of the first of his large-scale picto-sculptoramas, “Mr. and Mrs. Rembrandt.” Cheekwood is home to the largest public collection of works by the African-American sculptor William Edmondson. A self-taught artist from Nashville, Edmondson is now considered a master in twentieth-century American art. A special focus at Cheekwood is collecting art of the American West. Many of the pieces in this exhibition were given to Cheekwood by the John H. Hill family.