November’s exhibition brings together work by four painters who deny direct encounters, but instead offer oblique relationships to their subjects. Showcasing energetic brushwork, assertive color, and confident mark, these painters celebrate materiality and revel in the painted image.
Chattanooga-based Mamie Bivin received her BFA in painting and drawing from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC) in 2015. She has exhibited her work at Chattanooga’s Association for Visual Arts, Knoxville’s Gallery 1010, and UTC’s Cress Gallery. In 2015, Mamie was a featured Emerging Artist in Chattanooga’s 4 Bridges Arts Festival. She works with media including oil, ink, charcoal, and gouache to create richly varied surfaces which explore the relationships between painting and drawing, and figure and abstraction.
Jan Burleson holds a 1975 BSSW from East Tennessee State University, earned a 1980 MSSW from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and has been a Licensed Clinical Social Worker for thirty-six years. A 2016 BFA candidate from UTC, she also collaborates with G. David Brown in Burleson-Brown Photography. Jan was included in AVA’s 2015 FRESH Young and Emerging Artists Exhibit and has shown her work in regional exhibitions at East Tennessee State University’s Slocumb Gallery, Knoxville’s Dogwood Arts Regional Fine Art Exhibition, and the Athens’ Area Council for the Arts and Community Artists League exhibits, among others. Jan was awarded the 2013 Lillian B. Feinstein Scholarship at UTC.
Andy Qualls is a Chattanooga-based artist with a BFA in painting and drawing from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Heavily influenced by painters such as Antonio Lopez Garcia and Jenny Saville, as well as independent horror comics like the works of Emily Carroll and Fabien Vehlmann, their work revolves around the experience of existing bodily with the conscious awareness that such an existence does not necessarily carry on forever.
Christina Renfer Vogel earned a MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and a BFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University. Recent shows include solo exhibitions at The University of the South (Sewanee, Tenn.) and Berry College (Mt. Berry, Ga.). Christina has participated in artist residencies at the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts (Rabun Gap, Ga.), the Virginia Center for Creative Arts (Amherst, Va.), the Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, Vt.), and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts (Nebraska City, Neb.). She is a recipient of awards including a Nebraska Arts Council Independent Artist Fellowship and a grant from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation. Christina currently serves as an assistant professor of painting and drawing at UTC.